I went out on the day of our arrival at Enleh and shot a zebra with my Lee-Metford rifle, the ammunition for the larger rifles having dwindled to only a few cartridges. At dusk I went after a very large herd of oryx, but, losing them by the faint moonlight a little later, I opened fire on several Sœmmering’s gazelles, and bagged two with as many shots from the Lee-Metford. This I found an excellent rifle, using a pin’s head for a foresight, the pin being wedged into the slit which was in the old pattern military weapon. We cut up the zebra and gazelles for the twenty-five men whom I had in camp, and the meat was soon disposed of.
On the 28th of April I got a Waller’s gazelle with the Lee-Metford, and in the evening I crossed a wide valley to the south of camp and fell in with oryx. We found them, a bull and a cow, in good stalking cover on the farther side of the valley, near some deserted zeríbas, with open thorn jungle and tempting young grass. On first sighting them, two hundred and fifty yards away to the east of us, grazing southwards, the wind blowing from south to north, I lay down with Géli and Hassan behind a thicket of high durr grass and waited. The bull walked towards me, and then grazed for about ten minutes behind some bushes, the cow standing looking suspiciously in my direction. We continued lying down, and only looked up at long intervals, each with a bunch of grass held before the face. At last the bull appeared from behind the bushes; and sitting up, resting my elbows on my knees, I hit him with the Lee-Metford, and he made off at a gallop and hid in a deserted zeríba. Following on his tracks, I was within a yard of the zeríba before I saw the tips of his horns appearing over the brushwood, only six feet away from me. From the position of the horns I knew he was listening, and placing the muzzle of the rifle into the brushwood where his chest should be, I fired and sprang to one side, and he rushed away in the other direction at a gallop. I ran round the zeríba just in time to see him disappear in thick cover. Following, I took a quick shot at him as he crossed a glade one hundred and fifty yards away, and missed; and after another chase I ran on to him in thick cover, standing broadside on at fifteen yards, when I gave him a shot with a Winchester .500 Express. He walked off ten yards and stood again broadside on, looking at us; and then he dropped suddenly, stone dead.
A day or two later I went out shooting, and got a buck Waller’s gazelle, and in the chase lost Abokr and my camel; and after firing twelve signal shots unsuccessfully, I returned to camp. He afterwards turned up all right. In the evening I went out again, and got a pair of oryx out of a large galloping herd, emptying the Lee-Metford magazine at individual animals at ranges of from one hundred to three hundred yards. When after the oryx we found tracks of natives in the soil, and while walking home to camp after nightfall we heard distant singing, far out in the bush to the east. I told off a special guard, the men sleeping with their cartridge belts on, and doubled the sentries, keeping the first watch myself; the night, however, passed without incident.
The next morning I made for the remains of the two oryx, part of the meat of which we had not been able to take away, to see whether natives had been there. The spot in the bush was well marked by the vultures, which, having discovered the remains for the first time at break of day, were stooping in a slanting direction towards the place from all parts of the sky, wings extended and nearly motionless, legs stretched perpendicularly downwards. Except the vultures, and a large spotted hyæna which cantered lazily away from under a bush, nearly bursting with the banquet it had just had off the oryx, nothing had disturbed the neighbourhood. My men said the voices of the night before must have been those of “devils,” for we had gone far beyond the place whence the sound had appeared to come, and there was no track in the earth, and there had been no rain during the night to obliterate footmarks.
In the evening, the game never failing, taking my two hunters and a camelman, I followed some zebra, and by mistake shot a mare, which dropped out of the herd, and after going a short way fell dead. A foal, which I had not observed before, trotted after her, and stood a few yards from the body. This occurred in very thick country; and approaching noiselessly under cover of a thicket, ten yards from the dead zebra, we quietly constructed a slip-knot, loading the noose at intervals with bullets which my men tore with their teeth and spear-points from the cartridges in my belt. Going to the edge of the thicket, a yard or two from the foal, we tried to cast the noose over its head; but kicking up its heels it made off through the jungle. On the way home I fell in with a large herd of oryx, and shot three of them after a long hunt. We prepared the meat for transportation, covering it with bushes to keep off vultures, and marched back towards camp an hour before sunset. While still two miles from camp we heard voices hailing us from the east, but not knowing who might be calling, friend or foe, we decided to walk on to camp without answering the challenge. I only had three men with me, and, the voices issuing from several directions, we thought the sounds might possibly come from a force of Rer Amáden; so we continued walking towards camp, the hailing of the voices sounding sometimes close to us. They were so close that, as a precautionary measure, we four more than once grouped ourselves round the trunk of a tree, back to back, with rifles ready. The owners of the voices had evidently heard my rifle an hour or two before, and tried to hit off our whereabouts.
Arriving at camp, I found Yunis and the other guide, and three Amáden tribesmen, waiting by my tent. It was these men’s voices which we had heard in the bush. Yunis had good news to tell. He and his companions had come upon some Amáden, a small party of men who had wandered from the main karias of their tribe, which was encamped two days’ journey to the south. This party had come into the uninhabited country to collect gum-arabic, which they pick off the bushes, and send down to the coast tribes by small caravans, which return with cloth to the interior. The gum-pickers are always a very poor lot of people, often starving, and camping without flocks and herds, they undergo great hardships while carrying on their trade. The “devils” of the night before turned out to have been these gum-pickers, who, bivouacking in the bush in a small party without fires, had been shouting to scare lions, which had a bad reputation here. They had afterwards seen our fires and had retired, fearing Abyssinians; and following their tracks next day, my two guides had come up with them. The two Amáden offered on the morrow to guide us to their tribe and put us well on the road to Imé. They said that their headmen, the most important of whom were Sheikh Abdul Káder and Jáma Deria, had heard much of the Englishmen who were at Berbera, and wanted to see one and shake his hand!
At night came Jáma Deria and Hirsi, his son, mounted on white ponies. They slept in my camp. Jáma Deria was really a beautiful old man. He was a fine old fighting chief with a white beard, his features being well formed, but the complexion nearly black; he is the leading minstrel of the Rer Amáden tribe, and has composed songs which are sung on horseback in the dibáltig, and on other occasions, far and wide in Somáliland. His great hobby is lifting cattle and fighting with his neighbours, with the natural accompaniments, love of horseflesh and minstrelsy. I found Jáma Deria, despite his failings, to be a dear old man, with splendid qualities, although his character was rather spoilt by a strong tendency to stinginess; however, I subsequently became great friends with him. He expressed himself delighted that an Englishman had at last found out the Rer Amáden; he said the old men, young men, and children would all welcome me; and that he would lead me to the Sheikh (Abdul Káder) at Dambaswerer, where they hoped to keep me as long as I would stop. He said that he knew all the Imé tribes, who were very much afraid of him; and he hoped, now that the English were the friends of the Rer Amáden, he would be able to keep the Abyssinians[41] in their proper place.
On the 2nd of May we broke up our camp at Enleh early in the morning and marched to Galadúr, where we camped again. Old Jáma Deria and his son escorted me, and he was delighted to have been before the Sheikh in welcoming me to the country. He is a rival of the Sheikh, and has sometimes been his open enemy, having killed several of Abdul Káder’s relations; he keeps all the neighbouring tribes in a constant state of alarm, being a regular firebrand and loving a quarrel for its own sake.
As we advanced in the fresh morning air, the old man, in high spirits, would dash past me at full gallop, to display to the Englishman the quality of his pony and the red tassels on his saddle and bridle, returning after each circle to cry “Mót!” I could not help thinking of old Tarquin, in the Lays of Ancient Rome, whose spear, according to Macaulay, “shook more with hate than age.” A Somáli, poising his spear before throwing it, does it by a sudden jerk against the palm of his hand, causing the shaft to quiver; and he claims that this keeps it straight in the air, the effect being somewhat like that of the feathers on an arrow, or the twist caused by the rifling on a bullet.
As we got into a bit of open grass I shot a Sœmmering’s gazelle. The buck dropped in his tracks, and old Jáma, hastily dismounting and handing his mare to his son, paused an instant to whirl the free end of his tobe from his shoulder and to coil it round his waist, leaving the chest bare; and then, running like a two-year-old, he raced to the gazelle to perform the halal—that is, to sever the jugular with his short sword, without which operation all meat is harám, or unlawful, to a Mussulmán.