188 
HUNTING IN THE SOTIK [ch. viii 
and they rode out, and Loring shot her. She charged 
him savagely ; he shot her straight through the heart, 
and she fell literally at his feet. The three naturalists 
were all good shots, and were used to all the mishaps 
and adventures of life in the wilderness. Not only 
would it have been indeed difficult to find three better 
men for their particular work—Heller’s work, for 
instance, with Cuninghame’s help, gave the chief point 
to our big-game shooting—but it would have been 
equally difficult to find three better men for any 
emergency. I could not speak too highly of them ; 
nor, indeed, of our two other companions, Cuninghame 
and Tarlton, whose mastery of their own field was as 
noteworthy as the pre-eminence of the naturalists in 
their field. 
The following morning the headmen asked that we 
get the porters some meat. Tarlton, Kermit, and I 
sallied forth accordingly. The country was very dry, 
and the game in our immediate neighbourhood was not 
plentiful and was rather shy. I killed three kongoni 
out of a herd, at from two hundred and fifty to three 
hundred and ninety paces; one topi at three hundred 
and thirty paces, and a Roberts’ gazelle at two hundred 
and seventy. Meanwhile, the other two had killed a 
kongoni and five of the big gazelles, wherever possible 
the game being hal-lalled in orthodox fashion by the 
Mohammedans among our attendants, so as to fit it for 
use by their co-religionists among the porters. Then 
we saw some giraffes, and galloped them to see if there 
was a really big bull in the lot. They had a long start, 
but Kermit and Tarlton overtook them after a couple 
of miles, while I pounded along in the rear. However, 
there was no really good bull. Kermit and Tarlton 
pulled up, and we jogged along toward the koppies 
