CHAPTER XVIII—A JOUST WITH A BULL ORYX
On a sudden one hath wounded me,
That’s by me wounded
Romeo and Juliet
Truly, pleasure will be paid, one time or another
Twelfth Night
The following day we made our way to some adjacent wells, and spent the whole of the hours in filling up everything we could lay hands on with water. All old bottles were utilised, and I arranged that the precious fluid should be allowanced, and any man found helping himself would find the promised bonus at the end of the trip a myth. The camels and ponies were watered, and we had baths! Then, in the dawn of a day of intense heat, with the early sun a-shimmer on all the glory of green that surrounded us again, the air yet heavy with dew, and drowsy with the hum of myriad insects we marched, heading for the Haud. We might not again have any opportunity of securing any water before we negotiated the great tract, which we were to cross in a different part to our previous journey over.
The jungle was very dense, and the caravan simply crawled. I rode ahead, and about eight o’clock walked into, almost over, a lioness sound asleep with two cubs. She was off almost before I realised the marvel of the thing. Clarence dashed up, his quick eye had taken in the scene. He handed me my rifle. I frowned at him. Surely he had learned by this time that even a woman can be sporting. For it was not only discretion that made me play the better part, nor the thought of the panic a fracas with a lioness would cause in the caravan. I would have loved to take a cub home. But—there was a big but. Nobody short of a sportsman who “browns” a herd of buck indiscriminately—oh yes, there are such men here and there!—would destroy such a family. They departed in peace, and not in pieces. I spoored a little way, and in clear sandy ground came on the tiny pugs, now quiescent, now running and claw marks showing.
Next we came on rhino spoor, but in spite of what I had said Cecily halted the caravan, whilst she, in the very hottest part of the day, did a stalk. It all came to nothing, thanks be. I fell asleep on a herio, and awakened to find my tent over me. The men had erected it to screen me from the sun. They were servants in a thousand.
From this thick jungle we emerged on to a great open plain, or “bun,” and Clarence told me it was called the Dumberelli. He often told us the names of places we came to, and sometimes I wondered why they should be christened at all. The “bun” was a waving sea of bright green grass, and full of game. Aoul in regiments sought the new grass, an oryx or two, and “Sig” (Swayne’s gazelle), looking like well kept sea-side donkeys, stood about in ones and twos. But always out of range. Time was of such value here we could not make a really big attempt to secure a specimen of picked hartebeest. But I managed after a wearying effort, in which I was frustrated time and time again by alert bands of aoul, who constantly gave the alarm, to bag a smallish sig, a female, and they carry much lighter heads than the male. I could not afford to pick and choose. It was my first hartebeest, and I feared the possibility of going home minus a specimen of the genus. However, Cecily, who did a rival shoot on her own, secured a male, whose horns topped seventeen inches, a great improvement on the beggarly twelve of my trophy. We took the tape measurement on the front curves.