104 
THE NEW AFKICA 
him over; he lay for some time without moving, much to the 
surprise of his companions, who grabbed their sticks and looked 
wickedly at me. Quietly taking up my gun, I told them to go 
on cutting up the meat, an order they complied with at once 
without further demur, considerably cowed by the altered 
position of affairs and the summary manner of their champion’s 
treatment. Later, when he woke up, I packed him off with a 
heavy load of meat and told him to carry it home, which he did 
in dazed amazement, and now our difficulties w T ere settled. My 
only regret is that this episode did not occur sooner on the ex¬ 
pedition, for it appeared as if this lesson had a most salutary 
effect on the usual turbulent behaviour of some of the boys. 
At night we heard the note of some peculiar small kind of 
owl. Beginning in a deep tone, it uttered a succession of short 
threatening notes, each one higher than the last, till reaching an 
agonising high shriek, it returned to the original deep tone by 
several sweeping notes, each lower than before, that filled the 
night air with mysterious sound, as if in warning of something 
dreadful to come. 
On the way back from the buffalo hunt I shot a marabou that 
had some extremely light, beautiful, airy, white fluffy feathers 
under his longer tail feathers. I rescued these from the boys, 
who had stuck them in their woolly heads in most grotesque 
fashion, when I realised how beautiful they were. 
Some boys we had sent on ahead to look for the river returned 
in the afternoon with the meat of a sable antelope Paul had 
shot, and the news that the flat banks of the Chobe, lying 
some five miles northward, were covered with w^ater, a disagree¬ 
able outlook for our future tramp. 
On Monday we reached the river at about eight o’clock, where 
Jan, grounding the butt of his gun in the sand, said, c I go no 
further.’ I looked at him curiously to see if there was any sign 
of wavering about him; but discovering none, asked him if he 
would at any rate remain here and await the return of our boys 
from Matambanja’s. He assented, but in a manner not to be 
relied on; so hastily giving him some presents and cloth to trade 
