This Exciting Intelligence Made Me Inquire If It Was Not Possible To Find Them At Once; But, Being Assured That

They lived very far off, and that the best chance was the night, I gave way, and settled on starting

At ten, to arrive at the ground before the full moon should rise.

I set forth with the guide and two of the sheikh's boys, each carrying a single rifle, and ensconced myself in the nullah, to hide until our expected visitors should arrive, and there remained until midnight. When the hitherto noisy villagers turned into bed, the silvery moon shed her light on the desolate scene, and the Mgogo guide, taking fright, bolted. He had not, however, gone long, when, looming above us, coming over the horizon line, was the very animal we wanted.

In a fidgety manner the beast then descended, as if he expected some danger in store - and he was not wrong; for, attaching a bit of white paper to the fly-sight of my Blissett, I approached him, crawling under cover of the banks until within eighty yards of him, when, finding that the moon shone full on his flank, I raised myself upright and planted a bullet behind his left shoulder. Thus died my first rhinoceros.

To make the most of the night, as I wanted meat for my men to cook, as well as a stock to carry with them, or barter with the villagers for grain, I now retired to my old position, and waited again.

After two hours had elapsed, two more rhinoceros approached me in the same stealthy, fidgety way as the first one. They came even closer than the first, but, the moon having passed beyond their meridian, I could not obtain so clear a mark. Still they were big marks, and I determined on doing my best before they had time to wind us; so stepping out, with the sheikh's boys behind me carrying the second rifle to meet all emergencies, I planted a ball in the larger one, and brought him round with a roar and whooh-whooh, exactly to the best position I could wish for receiving a second shot; but, alas! on turning sharply round for the spare rifle, I had the mortification to see that both the black boys had made off, and were scrambling like monkeys up a tree. At the same time the rhinoceros, fortunately for me, on second consideration turned to the right-about, and shuffled away, leaving, as is usually the case when conical bullets are used, no traces of blood.

Thus ended the night's work. We now went home by dawn to apprise all the porters that we had flesh in store for them, when the two boys who had so shamelessly deserted me, instead of hiding their heads, described all the night's scenes with such capital mimicry as to set the whole camp in a roar. We had all now to hurry back to the carcass before the Wagogo could find it; but though this precaution was quickly taken, still, before the tough skin of the beast could be cut through, the Wagogo began assembling like vultures, and fighting with my men.

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