Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/109

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as I supposed, at the one I had located. As I fired, the animals bolted, first away, then back toward me. They wheeled, ran halfway between the dead animal and me, and passing on about a hundred yards to the right wheeled about again and stood watching me, the bulls in the front, lined up like soldiers, the calves and cows in the background. On coming up to the dead animal, I found, much to my regret, that I had shot a cow and not the bull I had picked out through the glasses.

I returned to camp feeling that now at last, from this herd living apparently in the open, we should have relatively little difficulty in completing our series of specimens. On the following morning, much to our disappointment, our first glimpse of the herd was just as it disappeared in the thorn bush along the bank of the river. We put in nearly a week of hard work to complete the series.

During those seven days of continual hunting, that herd which had been indifferent and unsuspecting at the beginning, like the elephants, became cautious, vigilant, and aggressive. For instance, on one occasion near the close of the week, after having spent the day trying to locate the herd, I suddenly came face to face with them just at the edge of the bush at night on my way back to camp. They were tearing along at a good pace, apparently having been alarmed. I stepped to one side and crouched in the low grass while they passed me in a cloud of dust at twenty-five or thirty yards. Even had I been able to pick out desirable specimens at this time I