The wound by rights ought to have been stitched, but we rather shied off doing it. The dressing was pantomime enough; I nearly lost my temper many times. An expedition like ours is a grand field on which to practise repression, and I was for ever trying conclusions with my capabilities in that direction.
Out early near here one morning we came on an astonishing sight—an oryx lying down in a thorn patch, and all around him, like familiars of a witch, crouched jackals, the length of one of their kind apart, watching with never flinching stare the centre of attraction. We cantered up, and the jackals reluctantly made off. One big fellow struck me as unlike his brethren, and a bit of a prize. So, reining in the pony, I jumped to the ground, losing a lot of time in the process, and fired with rather a shaky hand. The result was I hit the loping animal in the leg only, laming it, causing it to howl terribly, and causing me much shame for my unskilled aim.
I pursued my quarry, because I could not leave it out wounded, and overtook it just as it fled into a lair of thick adad bushes. Dismounting, I let the pony stand, and going to the bushes I stooped down to peer in, laying my rifle on the sand. A flare of green eyes and snarling teeth, a flat yellow head shot out as a snake strikes. My coat sleeve was gripped in a gin of white fangs, but only the incisors cut into my flesh—caught by the left arm in a flash. Before worse could happen I pulled my shikar pistol from my belt, and in the tussle—for we neither of us took things lying down—the weapon went off anyhow. My enemy sank inert, still gripping my sleeve. He was hit mortally, and died in a moment or two. My arm began to smart a trifle, and I had some difficulty in dragging the wolf-creature from its deep-in lair. It was a wolf, not large—no bigger than a jackal, and much smaller than a hyæna. Its coat was marked with brown, and right down the middle of the back was a fine upstanding length of hair that formed a black-tipped mane or ridge. The tail was long and thick, very black on the lower part and very yellow at the upper. The fore feet were five-toed; I counted them carefully.
It was a bit of a struggle to lift the carcase across the pony, and I had to walk, holding it on, to the place where I left Cecily. She was watching over the departed oryx, and vultures sat around her wistfully regarding the feast that might have been. In the side of the dead antelope an arrow still stabbed, and marks of a whole flight were in evidence all over the glossy coat. Some Midgans hunting without dogs had missed their quarry somehow. Cecily had put the big bull out of his pain, and there we were with an embarras de richesse miles from camp and alone. The oryx had very finely turned horns, and it seemed a sin to waste them. We set off to decapitate him with the only implement we had, a very small shikar knife. It took a long time in the doing, and we were so hot and tired and sick by the end of the performance, I thought we must be struck with the sun. The water in our bottles was quite hot.
The instant we left the carcase of the oryx the vultures came from all sides, hanging over it with legs poised to alight, screaming as they flapped along the ground and settled on the bushes around. We took it in turns to ride the spare pony; the other was a beast of burden for our spoils. A flock of quail ran ahead and disappeared beneath the khansa. The walking one walked, and the riding one rode, and at last we had to take our coats off. The heat grew insufferable, the sun blazed a-shimmer through the purple-blue coverlet of the sky. Even the sun loving sun-birds kept in the shade of the bushes. My rifle—best of playthings—took on a pound or two in weight.
Cecily wears perpetually a single-stone diamond ring, given her by a friend now in Purgatory, if everyone gets their deserts, as we are told is the invariable rule. The sun danced on the exquisite stone, and as she moved her hand a glinting light flickered from it on the sand here and there, like a will-o’-the wisp.
Our pony shied—actually pretending to possess nerves—at a porcupine, who suddenly rustled his quills like the upsetting of a box of pens. The oryx head fell off, and the mettlesome steed backed on to it, damaging the horn near the tip against a sharp stone. A small kink, but a pity. Cecily made the pony walk up to our friend of the quills, but as it seemed likely to result in the wolf being chucked off also, we abandoned horse-training notions for the present.
Getting back to camp, we found the men lining up for their devotions, so waited patiently until they were over. Everybody’s creed, or form of it, should be respected, because each separate religion, multitudinous though they are, is but one religion, and a part of the vast whole. The seeming difference in all sects are merely the individual temperamental superstitions. It does not matter, therefore, if we worship Allah or Joss, Buddha or Mrs. Eddy. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” To certain people certain names for religion are necessary—to others the “Religion Universal” serves. Now, our chef belonged to—I am sure—the Peculiar People, and didn’t know it, and called himself a Mussulman of the Shafai sect. He must have been peculiar to think he deceived us into believing he was a cook, ever had been, or ever would be. Some people are born cooks, some achieve cooking, and some have cooking thrust upon them. Our satellite was of the latter kind.
We bought a couple of sheep that night from a passing caravan, but told the men they would be the last we should provide if the animals could not be despatched in a quicker, more humane manner. The “hallal” slash across the throat seems only to be really efficacious if the animal to be killed is in full possession of its senses. They might easily be stunned first. When we killed antelope for meat the shikari always satisfied himself first that the animal was alive before he bothered to give the “hallal.” This seems rather an Irishism, but you understand how I mean.
Somali sheep are never shorn, for their wool attains no length. This is another of dear Nature’s wise arrangements. I do not like to imagine the condition of any poor sheep in the Somali sun with a coat on like unto the ones grown by our animals at home. The number of sheep in Somaliland is as the sands of the sea. Such vast flocks would be large even in an avowedly sheep-producing country where the rearing of them is reduced to a fine art. The Somali animals thrive and multiply with hardly any attention. They never grow horns, and have the most extraordinary tails, huge lumps of fat, which wax all very fine and large if the pasturage is good, and dwindle at once if the herbage is scanty. Carefully fostered, the sheep raising industry could support the country. The export at present is as nothing to what it might be engineered into.