THE DESERTS 
35 
accomplished the approach, when— O, Di inferi !—from 
close ahead there jumped a single gazelle—a fawn, of 
course (since no adult is ever surprised thus, napping in 
daylight). The incident necessarily signalled an alarm ; 
but it was not deep-seated, for presently our troop had 
recommenced grazing, half a mile ahead. Remembering 
the earlier lesson, I waited and watched, and reaped the 
reward. One hour later my friends were slowly grazing 
back towards their original stance. Presently the inter¬ 
rupted stalk was resumed on precisely the original lines, 
but a few hundred yards beyond the first-intended point 
of contact. Either stalk involved a final crawl, serpent- 
wise, across glowing sand that burnt the hand; but 
success repays all that. Yesterday’s success was due 
solely to luck. To-day, though “luck” at first had ebbed, 
yet patience triumphed. We had learnt the lesson ; still 
“it’s dogged as does it.” 
(iii) A Winning Hazard .—The rocky jebels of the 
desert produce no nutriment, nothing but black plutonic 
lava. Yet on such forage grazed a group of gazelle. 
Access from the crest above would be feasible, even easy, 
provided the stalker were equipped with the noiseless pads 
of a leopard, but otherwise impossible. An underfeature 
—a cluster of rocks 500 yards beyond—suggested an 
alternative scheme, namely, that the game might con¬ 
ceivably be “moved” thereto. In any case, in so vast a 
country, such manoeuvre could only succeed by the 
veriest fluke; and it failed through lack of co-ordination 
between joint efforts where tongues differ. Of my 
two Arab boys, one, too fleet of foot, passed beyond 
the “wind.” We then tried a second koppie. Here 
the rifle commanded two possible salients. That on 
his right, however, was altogether too wide to promise 
any reasonable prospect. The other . . . well, by supreme 
good luck, no gazelles took the broad and straight road 
that led to safety; but three elected to come in by “the 
other.” 
