Being now a sort of “serrefile” or hanger–on to the column, as Paget had come in command, I had lots of time to amuse myself, riding at a distance from the column with my gun ready. We saw wildebeeste, hartebeeste, ostriches, sable and roan antelopes, etc. Carew and I got two beauties of the latter on the 5th, and these supplied the whole camp with fresh meat. I got also a very fine tiger–cat (almost like a small leopard).
The longest march seems short when one is hunting game. Your whole attention is fixed at the same time on “distant views,” and on the spoor beneath your nose. Your gun is ready, and every sense is on the alert to see the game. Lion or leopard, boar or buck, nigger or nothing, you never know what is going to turn up. And what an appetite one has at the end of a twelve–mile march, when the folding mess–table is set up, and the Indian cook of the 7th has produced his excellent repast!
My only trouble is that I have lost two of my three horses; they broke loose from camp in the night, and strayed, poor starving brutes, in search of grass, and could not be found. And my remaining horse is very thin and weak. However, I got a pair of veldt schoen (Dutch shoes) at Gwelo, and so can do much of the march on foot now.
Another blow to me is the loss of Diamond, my Zulu boy, who wants to go home. I offered to take him to Beira, and to pay his passage home from there—but no, he must go back viâ Buluwayo. Why? Because he has a lot of money there,—his savings,—which he has hidden, and no one else can find them.
I didn’t know till to–day how to fry liver and bacon—the liver, after being cut in thin strips, should be dipped into a plate of mixed salt, pepper, and dry mustard, before going into the frying–pan. A small matter, but it makes a difference.
We journey on by Iron–Mine Hill, Orton’s Drift to Enkeldoorn, seventy miles from Gwelo, and forty from Charter.
Meantime, my clothes are in tatters. I remember a lady at a fancy dress ball at Simla figuring as a “beggar maid.” She was dressed in a black frock with bits of flesh–coloured silk stitched on to it here and there to look like holes! Many people said it was rather chic (some using the soft ch, others the hard). I am in the same state, only there is no need to stitch on flesh–coloured silk, and I don’t know that I look very chic; but it’s curious to find oneself getting sunburnt in an entirely new place: when bathing, I found that my right knee and thigh have their beautiful alabaster–like surface marred by eight irregular blotches of ruddy sunburn!
Rain has been threatening occasionally. Two or three days have been most oppressively hot, and clouds have gathered at nightfall, with mutterings of thunder, and distant lightning. We have put our waterproof sheets ready on going to bed, and sometimes have spread the waggon–sails over the waggons, and have gone to sleep dreaming of the fate in store for us campaigning in wet weather, with the roads impassable for mud, and the drifts unfordable for days together. But we have waked at dawn to find a bright, clear sky overhead, and the promise of another sunny, breezy day. But the rains are evidently not far off.
9th November.—Reached Enkeldoorn, just three huts forming a coach change–station, on open, rolling downs. The laager made by the Dutch farmers of the surrounding district is three miles distant.