294 THE GUASO NYERO [ch. xi 
bull with worn horns, and never saw me. On another 
occasion, while we were skinning a big zebra, there were 
three rhinoceroses, all in different places, in sight at the 
same time. 
There were also ostriches. I saw a party of cocks, 
with wings spread and necks curved backward, strutting 
and dancing. Their mincing, springy run is far faster 
than it seems when the bird is near by. The neck is 
held back in running, and when at speed the stride is 
twenty-one feet. No game is more wary or more diffi¬ 
cult to approach. I killed both a cock and a hen, which 
I found the naturalists valued even more than a cock. 
We got them by stumbling on the nest, which con¬ 
tained eleven huge eggs, and was merely a bare spot in 
the sand, surrounded by grass two feet high. The bird 
lay crouched, with the neck flat on the ground. When 
we accidentally came across the nest, the cock was on 
it, and I failed to get him as he ran. The next day we 
returned, and dismounted before we reached the near 
neighbourhood of the nest. Then I advanced cautiously, 
my rifle at the ready. It seemed impossible that so 
huge a bird could lie hidden in such scanty cover ; but 
not a sign did we see until, when we were sixty yards 
off, the hen, which this time was on the nest, rose, and 
I killed her at sixty yards. Even this did not make 
the cock desert the nest; and on a subsequent day I 
returned, and after missing him badly, I killed him at 
eighty-five yards ; and glad I was to see the huge black- 
and-white bird tumble in the dust. He weighed two 
hundred and sixty-three pounds and was in fine plumage. 
The hen weighed two hundred and forty pounds. Her 
stomach and gizzard, in addition to small, white quartz 
pebbles, contained a mass of vegetable substance ; the 
bright green leaves and twig tips of a shrub, a kind of 
