XVIII
THE CHARTER FLATS
Later in the day the party arrived back from Susi, and in the cool of the afternoon a last good-bye was said to the mission station, and they all returned to the Zimbabwe camp for their last night.
It had been casually mentioned that Carew had paid a flying visit the previous evening and gone again early that morning, but very little was said about the circumstance. Stanley was already beginning to look and feel disconsolate over the approaching exodus, and Diana was very full of the fact that she had shot a duyker. "I didn't really aim at him, you know," she told Grenville naïvely; "I just held up the gun and pulled the trigger. I couldn't believe my own eyes when I saw the buck lying dead. All the same I did shoot him, and I've got his horns, and they will occupy the place of honour when I get back in my own private sanctum. I shall not tell the Jo'burg folk about not aiming; why should I? If I describe the buck going at full speed, and how I bowled him over with one shot, it won't be any more of a lie, if as much, as most of you colonists tell when you get home to civilisation."
"Certainly not," agreed Grenville gravely; "but why not make it a lion while you are about it, or even a rhinoceros?"
The Kid began to giggle. "And let it be just charging you," he suggested joyfully. "And first you must take a snapshot of it charging, and then you must fire into its mouth and blow its brains out."
"And you might have its horns polished and mounted and its tail stuffed," added Grenville.
"Silly idiots," scornfully. "You're both jealous. If you could have seen the things The Kid missed!"
"The Kid generally misses," chimed in Ailsa cheerfully. "He gets so excited, he quivers all over, and the wild beast, or whatever it is, just lollops away, throwing a grin over his shoulder at him."