I sat up, as on the four previous nights, in my favourite bower, and at about 1 A.M. these people returned with a large mob of cattle which they had recovered and were bringing home. They were talking excitedly as they approached the pool. We heard one man ask, “Where were you wounded?” and another answer, “Oh, in the leg, but it isn’t bad.”
There were recriminations going on between two parties. The party which first came up was met by another party coming from the north-west, which appeared to have lost the enemy, for the first arrivals called out, “Why were you not at the fight; why did you run away?” and were answered, “Oh, we lost the way.” I wanted to challenge, but Géli and Hassan advised silence. This I would not agree to, for I thought that the men, nervous and excited as they were, if they did discover our presence accidentally by a rustle or otherwise, might suspect a hidden enemy and send a flight of arrows into my hiding-place to make sure. So I called out “Kumá?” (Who are you?), and as they halted Géli said it was a “Sirkal” (i.e. Government man or Englishman) with his two hunters, sitting up for game; and that they must look sharp and drink, and begone.
The men came down to drink, saying they would bring the cattle to water in the morning, and they further asked to be allowed to bivouac near my camp for additional security in case they should be followed. They said, “It is all right; we know you are an Englishman, and that you are here for no harm. The country is yours, we are your subjects; we beg to be excused for having killed some of the Habr Awal, for we know the Government dislikes bloodshed. But without our cattle we should have died.” Kuredelli is two hundred miles from the coast, and this is only one instance in many showing that British influence is recognised not only on the Somáli coast itself, but also in the distant interior. And no Englishman had been in this neighbourhood till my brother and I explored it a few months before.
These two or three hundred men had followed the tracks of their cattle, and between three o’clock on the previous afternoon and ten o’clock in the morning they had reached the open plains to the north; the distance covered in the ten hours could not have been less than thirty-five miles, with many delays inseparable from fighting and driving cattle over rough ground at night. They had found the Habr Awal, about half their strength, in the ban or open grass plains, and had at once attacked them by the light of the moon, killing two of the enemy and losing a man themselves, killed by a poisoned arrow. The enemy then fled.
The cattle were driven past with clouds of dust and a clamour of excited voices, and then they all disappeared in the distance, and I heard my sentry challenge them as they drew up at my camp half a mile away, and after another half-hour of chatter they gradually settled down to rest. I had never met this clan of the Abbasgúl before. The men flocked to camp next day from their karias in great numbers, and seeing the trophies of the lioness and rhinoceros lying on the grass outside my tent door, they said, “The Abyssinians can’t do that; their guns are small, and are only good for killing women and children and old men with: you English are our friends, and all the Ogádén tribes look to you, our masters, for protection against Abyssinia.”
On 31st March we made two marches to Girbi, seventeen miles eastward along the Jerer Valley, and the next day we made a short march in a heavy storm of rain, the burst of the south-west monsoon; and the red clay became so sticky that we were obliged to halt in the thick bush. When things were a little dry again, I went out towards sunset into the level thorn forest to look for oryx. We had gone about a mile from camp when we saw a large rhinoceros bull trotting along under the trees a quarter of a mile away, having evidently winded us. We ran at an angle to cut him off, but he changed his pace to a heavy gallop, crashing through the thick parts of the jungle as if they had been clumps of grass. We followed in his wake, but failed to get within shot, for a rhinoceros should not be fired at from a greater distance than about eighty yards; and so we settled steadily down to his tracks, hoping to catch him up before nightfall. He retreated into very thick bush, and as he was going with the wind he twice winded us, and made off when we were close up, but the jungle being thick we could not see him. At last, night coming on, we left him and returned to camp after dark, very tired and disappointed.
Next day, the 2nd April, we marched on. As we advanced down the Jerer Valley by rapid stages we passed suddenly from country dried up by continued drought into a world of green grass and jungle, with an overcast sky, the effect of the bursting of the south-west monsoon over the lower Jerer Valley some ten days before. Nothing can be more pleasant in Somáliland than this sudden change: the camels march better owing to fresh fodder; the air is rendered cool, allowing one to travel during any hour of the day; and the thorn-trees give out a strong perfume.
At 5.30 P.M. on 3rd April we camped in the bush, without water, at Manjo-adéyu. Before camping I fired at a buck Waller’s gazelle, wounding it badly, but it did not drop at once, and we had to follow it up. I was rather fagged, having done a long march on foot owing to my camel being lame; and sending on ahead my Midgán hunter, Hassan, I followed the tracks with Géli at a leisurely pace. We at last came to the buck, lying dead, and Hassan standing over it. He reported that he had just seen the buck pulled down before his eyes by a large panther, which had caught sight of him after springing upon it, and had cantered away through the forest.
Sending the three camels and mule out of sight into some thick bush to the south, and ordering a camelman to overtake the caravan and have the camp pitched, I sat with Géli and Hassan by the stem of a tree on a bare patch of ground some fifteen yards from the body of the buck, the sun shining horizontally from behind our backs.
We waited for half an hour, then Géli pointed to the north-east, and the panther came gliding silently through the underbrush, coming straight for the body of the buck. While he was yet one hundred and fifty yards off I saw his beautifully spotted skin and bullet head, and marking his course I chose a bush eighty yards away, aligning the sight so as to be ready to fire when he should come out into the open beyond it on our side. I held the ivory foresight over this spot, and as he passed the bush and his head and shoulders appeared, I pulled, a satisfactory thud answering the ring of the rifle; and in the stillness following the shot I saw a tail violently agitated above the grass. Slipping in a fresh cartridge to replace the empty case, I walked up and found the panther dead, shot through the neck.