RUBBER VINES 
807 
CH. Xl] 
Sometimes I left camp with my sais and gun-bearer 
before dawn, starting in the light of the waning moon, 
and riding four or five hours before halting to wait for 
the safari. On the way I had usually shot something 
for the table—a waterbuck, impalla, or gazelle. On 
other occasions Cuninghame and I would spend the 
day hunting in the waterless country back of the river, 
where the heat at midday was terrific. We might not 
reach camp until after nightfall. Once, as we came to 
it in the dark, it seemed as if ghostly arms stretched 
above it; for on this evening the tents had been pitched 
under trees up which huge rubber vines had climbed, 
and their massive dead white trunks and branches 
glimmered pale and ghostly in the darkness. 
Twice my gun-bearers tried to show me a cheetah ; 
but my eyes were too slow to catch the animal before it 
bounded off in safety among the bushes. Another 
time, after an excellent bit of tracking, the gun-bearers 
brought me up to a buffalo bull, standing for his noon¬ 
day rest in the leafless thorns a mile from the river. I 
thought 1 held the heavy Holland straight for his 
shoulder, but I must have fired high, for, though he 
fell to the shot, he recovered at once. We followed 
the blood-spoor for an hour, the last part of the time 
when the trail wandered among and through the heavy 
thickets under the trees on the river banks. Here I 
walked beside the tracker with my rifle at full cock, for 
we could not tell at what instant we might be charged. 
But his trail finally crossed the river, and as he was 
going stronger and stronger, we had to abandon the 
chase. In the waterless country, away from the river, 
we found little except herds of zebra, of both kinds, 
occasional oryx and eland, and a few giraffe. A stallion 
of the big kangani zebra which I shot stood fourteen 
