Accordingly I
Crept Away With The Object Of Finding My Mount,
But To My Delight - Just Behind Me And Well
Hidden - stood the undefeated Landaalu, who in
some mysterious way had followed me up, found
the pony where I had
Left it tied to a tree, and
brought it on to me. With a bright grin on his
face he thrust the reins into my hand, and I was
up and galloping off in an instant.
I soon discovered that I had further to go than
I expected, for I was forced to make a big detour
in order to keep out of sight of the herd; but on
halting once or twice and peeping through the
trees I saw that all was going well and that they
were still calmly moving on in the right direction.
The last quarter of a mile had to be negotiated
in the open, but I found that by lying flat down
on my pony's back I was completely hidden from
the advancing herd by an intervening swell in
the ground. In this manner I managed to get
unobserved to the lee of my hillock, where I
dismounted, threw the reins over a stump, and
crawled stealthily but as quickly as I could to
the top. I was in great doubt as to whether I
should be in time or not, but on peering,
hatless, over the crest, I was overjoyed to find the
whole herd just below me. One of the eland,
not twenty yards off, saw me at once, and stood
still to gaze at me in astonishment. It was a
female, however, so I took no notice of her, but
looked round to see if my great bull were
anywhere near. Yes, there he was; he had passed
the spot where I lay, but was not more than forty
yards off, moving in the same leisurely fashion as
when I first saw him. An instant later, he
noticed the general alarm caused by my
appearance, and stopped and turned half round to see
what was the matter. This gave me my
opportunity, so I fired, aiming behind the shoulder.
The way in which he jumped and kicked on
feeling the lead told me I had hit him hard, and I
got two more bullets into him from the magazine
of my .303 before he managed to gain the
shelter of a neighbouring thicket and was lost to
sight. In the meantime the whole herd had
thundered off at full gallop, disappearing in a few
minutes in a cloud of dust.
I was confident that there would be little
difficulty in finding the wounded eland, and on
Landaalu coming up - which, by the way, he did
almost immediately, for he was a wonderful goer
- we started to make a rough search through the
thicket. Owing to the growing darkness,
however, we met with no success, so I decided to
return to camp, which was many miles away, and
to resume the quest at daybreak the following
morning. It turned out that we were even
further from home than I thought, and black night
came upon us before we had covered a quarter of
the distance. Fortunately the invaluable Landaalu
had discovered a good crossing over the swamp,
so we were able to press on at a good pace
without losing any time in overcoming the
obstacle. After an hour or so of hard travelling,
we were delighted to see a rocket go up, fired
by my friends to guide us on our way. Such a
sight is wonderfully cheering when one is far
away from camp, trudging along in the inky
darkness and none too certain of one's direction;
and a rocket equipment should invariably be
carried by the traveller in the wilds. Several
more were sent up before we got anywhere near
camp, and I remarked to Landaalu that we must
have gone a very long way after the eland.
"Long way," he replied; "why, Master, we
have been to Baringo!" This lake as a matter
of fact was fully fifty miles away. When finally
we arrived I fired the ardour of my companions
by relating the adventures of the afternoon and
telling them of the wonderful herd I had seen;
and it was at once agreed that we should stay
where we were for a day or two in the hope
of good sport being obtained.
As soon as it was daylight the next morning
I sent out a party of our porters with full
instructions where to find my eland, which I was sure
must be lying somewhere in the thicket close to
the hill from where I had shot him; and very
shortly afterwards we ourselves made a start.
After a couple of hours' travelling we were lucky
enough to catch sight of a portion of the herd
of eland, when we dismounted and stalked them
carefully through the long grass. All of a sudden
one popped up its head unexpectedly about fifty
yards away. One of my companions
immediately levelled his rifle at it, but from where I
was I could see better than he that the head
was a poor one, and so called out to him not
to fire. The warning came too late, however,
for at that moment he pulled the trigger. It
was rather a difficult shot, too, as the body of
the animal could not be seen very well owing to
the height of the grass; still, as the head
instantly disappeared we hoped for the best and
ran up to the place, but no trace of the eland
could be found. Accordingly we pushed on again
and after a little rested for a short time under the
shade of some trees. We had gone about three
miles after resuming our search for game, when
one of the porters remembered that he had left
the water-bottle he was carrying at the trees
where we had halted, so he was sent back for it
with strict injunctions to make haste and to rejoin
us as quickly as possible.
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