It was about 4.30 on the second morning in camp. I turned over luxuriously in my blankets, and lay on my back blinking hazily at the overhead stars. It was within that dreamless hour before rising time, when the many disturbances of night on war service had passed away, and given place to peaceful rest and deep, delicious comfort and content. Half consciously I saw that dawn was breaking, and was aware that overnight I had promised to go on a surreptitious game hunt at daylight. What a fool’s promise I thought that now! and I nestled snugly into the blankets for just “five minutes more.”
“Buck! Come on!”
Rudely I was startled to active wakefulness, as the words of Lieutenant Gilham broke into my slumbers in a low voice.
“Right!” I called back as I sat upright. It was full daylight. Gilham was pulling his boots on in his lair under a bush a few yards away. We grinned at each other and dressed rapidly, silently; we knew the value of stealth.
RATIONS VERY LOW
Rations were low. Flour, and half a pound of bully beef, had been yesterday’s issue, and Gilham, a veteran from South Africa, had come to me with the scheme to clear into the bush at daylight on the morrow. It was against orders to shoot, and perhaps against orders to leave the camp, but, being old hunters, and hungry, the old instinct got the better of discipline, and we had agreed to “chance it” in the morning.
All ready! Gilham lit a cigarette—that was in the days when we still had a few—lifted a service rifle, and started off, with a nod to me to come on. Signing to my black boy, Hamisi, I followed out, between the line of sleeping trek-tired soldiers, who lay along the west front of our perimeter. Immediately we were in the dense thorn-bush and wending our way laboriously, carefully, westward through the cruel-fanged jungle of countless cactus needles and grasping hook-thorns. It was the familiar type of African bush—dry, waterless, gravel and sand surface, grown with low wide-branching thorn-trees at fairly open intervals, filled in with a dense undergrowth of smaller shrubs, sisal, cactus, and grasses, until only narrow sand washes, or game paths, remain open, for short intervals, here and there. Through this one wends his way, zigzagging, dodging, stooping, and always on the look-out to move along the line of least resistance.
It is rough going, as rough as one will meet with in many travels. If one who has not experienced it can think of a hard mountain climb, or of a long march at the end of twenty miles, or of stiff canoe-going up-river, one may realise something of the stress of endurance. For the rest—the scratching, patience-trying obstacles—if you would picture the worst of them—the thorn-tree Mgoonga—imagine half a dozen groups of Stewart tackle clutching along your arm or leg or helmet, while another lot threatens to tear your shirt back to rags. When you are hooked, you cannot free yourself by forcing forward; you must draw gingerly back, and extricate each barb with commendable patience; be impatient, and you will instantly be hooked up worse than ever. I will carry memories of Mgoonga as long as I live. But the bush is not all dense, and this morning, after an hour’s travelling, we found more open spaces, along which one could sometimes look to right or left or in front, for fifty yards or so. We were then well out from camp, and, with a cross wind from the south aiding us, we judged we could safely fire our rifles without fear of sound of report reaching back to head-quarters.
HUNTING FOR FOOD
In whispers we agreed “all clear,” and the locks of our rifles clicked, as cartridges were slipped into place, ready for action, while the boy dropped fifty yards behind, as we moved ahead in Indian file, silently, alertly, Gilham leading. We were hungry, and we meant to have meat!