168 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
troubled their keen instincts. How could it ? They have 
no ha’penny papers to instruct them in all they ought to 
know—and much more besides. But the lurking “ rifle ” 
had sympathy, and for long forbore to disturb a scene of 
the peaceful prime. Still, I had come out with an object 
—had travelled 7000 miles to effect that object—and the 
time for action had arrived. 
The game at this point could not be described as wild. 
I had had no difficulty in gaining a position to landward 
whence I could watch at leisure. 1 Ere daylight was fully 
established the “teel” had drawn away from the water 
and slowly moved inland, several passing unsuspicious 
close by where I lay hidden. The range of colour- 
variation was conspicuous, not to say confusing. 
During that memorable morning I shot three of my 
four permitted specimens and obtained a fourth head 
which had been killed by Shilluks. These stark savages, 
by the way, had hung on our flanks all day, and on one 
occasion helped me to secure a buck that had been hit 
rather too low down on the shoulder, but only after a 
run of a couple of miles before their dogs. It formed a 
wondrously wild episode, and but for their assistance we 
might not have retrieved that buck. At parting, we had 
given them a couple of carcases and, after dark, when we 
were already under-way, they hailed Candace , asking us to 
send a boat ashore as they had a head they wished to 
give us. Surely this was a bit of true natural courtesy 
(by way of a return for our gifts) that was particularly 
graceful, not to say amazing, on the part of the wildest 
of wild savages? These Shilluks belong to a tribe 
spreading eastwards from Kaka, and their chief, resident 
1 I ought not entirely to omit mention of the fact that during this 
manoeuvre I passed within 20 yards of a mimosa-tree upon which was 
roosting a golden eagle. At such close quarters every detail of plumage 
was clearly discernible, and I set down the bird in my notebook as Aquila 
chrysaetos with absolute confidence. Whether our European golden eagle 
penetrates so far south, I do not know ; if not, he has here a local 
“double.” 
