“I wish we could,” I said, for now that my mind was at rest I felt ravenously hungry. “Hullo! what’s going on there?”
Denham turned sharply, and, to our astonishment, Sergeant Briggs was coming from the gate leading half-a-dozen men stripped to shirt and breeches, carrying in half-quarters of some newly-killed animal.
“Why, hullo!” I cried, “what luck! They’ve found and been slaughtering an ox.”
“Yes,” said Denham dryly, “and there’s more meat out yonder. We shan’t starve. I’d forgotten.”
“Forgotten! Forgotten what?”
“It isn’t beef,” he said quietly. “It’s big antelope.”
“What! eland?” I cried joyously.
“No; the big, solid-hoofed antelope that eats like nylghau or quagga.”
“What do you mean?” I said wonderingly, as I mentally ran over all the varieties of antelope I had seen away on the veldt.
“The big sort with iron soles to their hoofs. Two poor brutes, bleeding to death, dropped about a hundred yards away as we came in last night.”