We also towed about with us two immensely heavy shot guns. They were a great nuisance, merely adding to the baggage, and we never used them as far as I remember.
As we meant frequently to go about unescorted, a revolver or pistol seemed indispensable in the belt, and under any conditions such a weapon would be handy and give one a sense of security. On the advice of another great sportsman we equipped ourselves with a good shikar pistol apiece, 12-bore; and I used mine on one occasion very effectively at close quarters with an ard-wolf, so can speak to the usefulness and efficiency of the weapon.
It was the “cutting the ivy” season in Suburbia when we drove through it early one afternoon, and in front of every pill-box villa the suburban husband stood on a swaying ladder as he snipped away, all ora ora unmindful of the rampant domesticity of the sparrows. The fourteenth of February had long passed, and the fourteenth is to the birds what Easter Monday is to the lower orders, a general day for getting married.
A few days in town amid the guilty splendour of one of the caravan-serais in Northumberland Avenue were mostly spent in imbibing knowledge. My uncle never wearied of his subject, and it was to our interest to listen carefully. Occasionally he would wax pessimist, and express his doubts of our ability to see the trip through; but he was kind enough to say he knows no safer shot than myself. “Praise from Cæsar.” Though I draw attention to it that shouldn’t! The fragility of my physique bothered him no end. I assured him over and over that my appearance is nothing to go by, and that I am, as a matter of fact, a most wiry person.
This shoot of ours was no hurried affair. We had been meditating it for months, and had, to some extent, arranged all the difficult parts a long time before we got to the actual purchases of stores, and simple things of the kind. We had to obtain special permits to penetrate the Ogaden country and beyond to the Marehan and the Haweea, if we desired to go so far. Since the Treaty with King Menelik in 1897 the Ogaden and onwards is out of the British sphere of influence.
How our permits were obtained I am not at liberty to say; but without them we should have been forced to prance about on the outskirts of every part where game is abundant. By the fairy aid of these open sesames we were enabled to traverse the country in almost any part, and would have been passed from Mullah to Sheik, from Sheik to Mullah, had we not taken excellent care to avoid, as far as we could, the settled districts where these gentry reside. At one time all the parts we shot over were free areas, and open to any sportsman who cared to take on the possible dangers of penetrating the far interior of Somaliland, but now the hunting is very limited and prescribed. We were singularly fortunate, and owe our surprising good luck to that much maligned, useful, impossible to do without passport to everything worth having known as “influence.”
The tents we meant to use on the shoot were made for us to a pattern supplied. They were fitted with poles of bamboo, of which we had one to spare in case of emergencies. The ropes, by particular request, were of cotton, in contradistinction to hemp, which stretches so abominably.
Two skinning knives were provided, and some little whet-stones, an axe, a bill-hook, two hammers, a screwdriver—my vade mecum—nails, and many other needful articles. We trusted to getting a good many things at Berbera, but did not like to leave everything to the last. Our “canned goods” and all necessaries in the food line we got at the Army and Navy Stores. Field-glasses, compasses, and a good telescope our generous relative contributed.
They say that the best leather never leaves London, that there only can the best boots be had. This is as may be. Anyway the shooting boots made for us did us well, and withstood prodigious wear and tear.
The night before our departure we had a “Goodbye” dinner and, as a great treat, were taken to a music-hall. Of course it was not my first visit, but really, if I have any say in the matter again, it will be the last. Some genius—a man, of course—says, somewhere or other, women have no sense of humour—I wonder if he ever saw a crowd of holiday-making trippers exchanging hats—and I am willing to concede he must be right. I watched that show unmoved the while the vast audience rocked with laughter.