THE WESTERN BEND 
227 
his visage had been sliced into fragments and one eye 
. . . well, it wasn’t in its normal site. That poor stricken 
savage might have been at Louvain or Aerschot—but 
those horrors had not then shocked the world. With 
averted gaze, I requested him to pilot me out of that 
Serbonian bog. From his reply I gathered that he had 
urgent business elsewhere, but that he would send 
someone else. With that he vanished amidst the 
tasselled sedges, a pathetic memory. 
None who have had experience with big-game can 
have failed to notice that, even under the stress of 
terrible injuries, animals often appear callous, actually 
unpained, hardly even inconvenienced. But to see a 
human being so—bearing his wounds without a flinch, 
though without hope of relief—created a different sensation. 
Surely in their respective perceptions of pain, the margin 
between wild beasts and savage man must be narrow ? 
Within five minutes the substituted guide, a stalwart 
and smiling young Shilluk, arrived, and without spoken 
word took the lead ; soon we had regained a firm foothold. 
Those big nests drew blank—they generally do. in 
mid-win ter (though one of them, it was obvious, had 
recently been occupied by youngsters)—but I am not 
here going into ornithological detail. Suffice it to say 
that we enjoyed a delightful morning and later secured 
in these forests many specimens. 1 
On the outskirts of the forest, where it thins out into 
scattered trees, our guide led us into his native village, 
and a truly primitive settlement it proved. This was, I 
imagine, a temporary “cattle-camp,” for the Nilotic 
tribes live as a rule in grass-built huts of the beehive 
pattern. Here, aboriginal architecture was reduced to 
1 Such as tchagra (see over), masked and helmet-shrikes, colies and 
wood-hoopoes ; glossy starlings brilliant in iridescent purples, lilacs, and 
chestnut ; babblers, barbets, and bee-eaters in grass-green with crimson 
contrasts ; sun-birds, serins, and silver-bills ; drongos, finch-larks, spot¬ 
winged doves, a honey-guide ; and an eagle-owl ( Bubo cinerascens) killed 
with the *410 Tomtit gun ! 
