VIII 
JOURNEY TO WEB BE SHABELEH RIVER 
201 
A day or two later I went out shooting, and got a buck 
Waller’s gazelle, and in the chase lost Abokr and my camel ; 
when, after firing twelve signal shots unsuccessfully, I returned 
to camp. He afterwards turned up all right. In the evening I 
went out again, and got a pair of beisa out of a large galloping 
herd, emptying the Lee-Metford magazine at individual animals 
at ranges of from one hundred to three hundred yards. 
The next morning I made for the remains of the two beisa, 
part of the meat of which we had not been able to take away. 
The spot in the bush was well marked by the vultures, which, 
having discovered the remains for the first time at break of day, 
were swooping in a slanting direction towards the place from all 
parts of the sky, wings extended and nearly motionless, legs 
stretched perpendicularly downwards. Except the vultures, and 
a large spotted hyaena which cantered lazily away from under a 
bush, nearly bursting with the banquet it had just had off the 
beisa, nothing had disturbed the neighbourhood. 
In the evening, the game never failing, taking my two hunters 
and a cam elm an, I followed some zebra, and by mistake shot a 
mare, which dropped out of the herd, and after going a short 
way fell dead. A foal, which I had not observed before, trotted 
after her, and stood a few yards from the body. This occurred 
in very thick country ; and approaching noiselessly under cover 
of a thicket, ten yards from the dead zebra, Ave quietly constructed 
a slip-knot, loading the noose at intervals with bullets which my 
men tore with their teeth and spear-points from the cartridges in 
my belt. Going to the edge of the thicket, a yard or two from 
the foal, we tried to cast the noose over its head ; but kicking 
up its heels it made off through the jungle. On the way home 
I fell in with a large herd of beisa and shot three after a long 
hunt. We prepared the meat for transportation, covering it with 
bushes to keep off vultures, and marched back towards camp an 
hour before sunset. While still two miles from camp we heard 
voices hailing us from the east, but not knowing who might be 
calling, friend or foe, we decided to walk on to camp without 
answering the challenge. I had only three men with me, and, 
the voices issuing from several directions, we thought the sounds 
might possibly come from a force of Her Amhden ; so we con- 
tinued walking towards camp, the hailing of the voices sounding 
sometimes close. They were so close that, as a precautionary 
measure, we four more than once grouped ourselves round the 
trunk of a tree, back to back, with rifles ready. The owners of 
