CHAPTER XVIII 
VOYAGE UP WHITE N I LE— (continued) 
THE WESTERN BEND (BY THE ZERAF RIVER) 
(i) A Morning in a Marsh 
During the night we had anchored opposite a sedge-clad 
bog wherein the year before I had wounded (and lost) an 
unknown prize—a “Porphyrio” of sorts, but one that 
enjoys no allotted place in the Sudan avifauna . 1 Beyond 
the bog, a mile away, a tempting forest displayed two 
great stick-built nests, by one of which stood perched a 
giant jabiru—it was the old attraction of “Caldecot’s 
Spinny ” in Tom Brown . I resolved to reach those great 
nests at any cost, and plunged into the interposed marsh, 
ecstatic in varied anticipations. At the end of an hour 
those ecstasies were cooling. A ceaseless struggle through 
canes, each as strong and as stubborn as a mule, combined 
with an entanglement of khors that embogged above 
the knee, had tended to pale the more roseate aspect 
of mundane things. At this juncture I found myself 
face to face with a sinister-looking savage. He was 
immensely tall—most Shilluks are—and carried a coal- 
shovel spear, while right across his chest stretched a 
great gaping gash, half-healed; then his face . . . well, 
I only saw it once , but that glimpse sufficed. My visual 
sense recoils from a sickening memory. To put it mildly, 
1 A big waterhen-like bird, dull sage-green in colour with a “ fever- 
green ” beak and frontal plate. Later I saw another similar, twenty miles 
west of Zeraf, but failed to procure either—they were too big for the 
“ collecting-gun ” ; so there remains “ something new” in Sudan. 
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