These guns were rather weak to shoot the large game with, but H. had brought his Rigby's "Express" with him, which, he said, I could use whenever I wanted to do so.
Dec. 31.—We had all four settled the evening before to go out shooting, and accordingly, this morning, we started early for the lowest range of hills to be seen in the distance. We expected to find some small game, such as gazelles and small deer. I rode a camel, and H. a donkey. Traversing the narrow causeway which joined the little peninsula on which our camp was situate to the mainland, the first thing that struck me was the beautiful colours of the fish in the seawater at each side of the causeway. A. got off his camel and tried to shoot one, but the water was rather deep.
On reaching the mainland we found ourselves in a large open plain covered with stunted bushes, and in the distance could be seen the village of Moncullu, where the residents of Massowah go during the heat of summer, which is very great in this climate.
H. and I made for the hills as quickly as we could; my camel striding ahead took the lead, and he followed on his donkey. The motion of the camel is very pleasant; as I had bought a capital camel-saddle in the bazaar at Cairo, so far from the motion being inconvenient, as some travellers allege it to be, I found it very comfortable; it almost made me fall asleep.
We saw no game on the plain we were crossing. When we had got over the first range of small hills, the guide, a Shoho Arab, stopped in the sandy bed of a small river where some Arabs were watering their flocks of goats. The water is got at by grubbing a hole in the sandy bed of the river, and then the Arabs scoop it up with a goatskin into a wooden trough, or, failing that, into another hole made in the sand.
Here we stopped for a short time, watered our beasts, and asked the natives if they had seen any game. They said there was something in some bushes close by, whereupon we were both on the tiptoe of expectation. I got my rifle ready, and H. his shotgun. We went towards the spot indicated, and, almost among the herd of goats, I saw running about a small brown-looking beast, like a very small deer. We tried to stalk him, but he bolted past. H. fired at him and missed; I then fired my rifle and missed also. We then kicked him out of another bush, but H. did not see him, he having broken cover on the wrong side.
This animal turned out to be a little mouse-deer, or dik-dik. In loading my rifle again, I rammed down the bullet without putting in any powder, not being accustomed to use muzzle-loading weapons. This put one barrel hors de combat; thus the reader will see that my first attempt at African sport was not a success.
One of the natives then volunteered to show us some bigger deer. We went on through a sandy, rocky valley in which mimosa-bushes were dotted about. H. agreed to go to the ground to the right and I to the left, so as to work it over thoroughly. The boy who was with me said he saw some deer on the ridge of the high hill at the foot of which I was; I went up the hill, and sent him round the other way. On coming to the top I saw the deer feeding and wagging their tails just below me, but they were too far off for the rifle I had. I longed for my Express, which, at that time, was on its way to Pointe de Galle in Ceylon, instead of being with me! The deer caught sight of me and trotted away. I sent back the boy for H., as he had his Express with him; when he joined me we tried to get at them again, but failed. We saw another dik-dik, and then started for home, in a temperature that was very hot indeed.
We were back in camp late in the afternoon, and, having had something to eat, I determined to take my rifle on board the Dessook, to ask the engineer, who was an Englishman, to extract the bullet. Arrekel Bey, the Governor, sent a boat round to our camp, and the men rowed us out to the ship, singing, as they were rowing, a wild Arab song which sounded very prettily. It was a lovely moon-lit night, and every dip of their oars in the water threw up waves of phosphorescent light; which phenomenon everybody who has been in these latitudes must have seen and admired.