It was getting late, and a heavy thunder-storm was coming up from the south,—always a disagreeable experience in these hills, and especially so in this instance, because I had nothing on but a thin vest, a pair of khaki drill breeches, and red rubber tennis shoes with long stockings, the day having been too hot for climbing steep hills in a coat.
It became intensely cold as the sun set and the rain poured down, so employing all our knives we soon whipped off the skin of the koodoo, and I threw it over my shivering shoulders like a shawl, hair inside. The Somalis had their tobes. We cut off the grand head, taking care to leave plenty of the skin of the neck and beard; and each of us being loaded with head, meat, or rifles, made our way over the hills back to camp, arriving an hour after dark; Hassan, who had pointed me out the koodoo, being privileged to sing the hunting-song as we approached the camp fire.
During the next six days I went after koodoo morning and evening without success, sometimes going up into the mountains before dawn and not returning till after nightfall, and shifting camp from one watering-place to another.
On the sixth day I had a long hunt after a koodoo with fine horns, which we had got news of in Harka-weina in the Henweina valley; we saw the koodoo across a gorge, and after making a long détour to get into a favourable position for a stalk, we found that he had mysteriously disappeared.
On the same evening we marched five miles across the Henweina valley, and made our bivouac at the karia of one Waiss Mahomed, of the Adan Esa, Esa Musa, Habr Awal. The people here were very kind and attentive to me, bringing me willingly goats, sheep, and milk to buy whenever I wanted supplies. The camp was pitched among large, flat-topped gudá thorn-trees hung with thick masses of armo creeper, which forms a deep and cool shade, and has a light green, heart-shaped leaf, thick and rubber-like and full of sap. At a distance of a mile on every side of the camp were the foothills of Gólis Range. The spot was pleasant, and I resolved to make a halt of several days here, looking for koodoo and making up the bundles of specimens ready to be enclosed in boxes when I arrived at Aden, and sent to Mr. Rowland Ward in London. This halt was a great rest for the men after the incessant marching of the last four months, and they thoroughly enjoyed it.
On 12th June I sent out two parties to look for koodoo, and waited in camp till 10 A.M. for news from these men, or from the Esa Musa cowboys who were herding cattle on the mountains. A herd-boy brought in news that he had seen four bull koodoos together on the top of a mountain, about three miles away, and fifteen hundred feet above camp. After a very toilsome climb, the day being exceptionally hot, the herd-boy led us to a saddle in the hills where he had last seen the four bulls; and as he took us with the wind by mistake, we only heard the rattle of stones as the game galloped away; we found their tracks, but never came up with them. Much disappointed, we descended by the most stony goat-track which I remember to have traversed at any time, and we arrived in camp very much done up.
I had just thrown myself on my camel-mats to rest when Géli and Hassan came in triumphantly with news of another bull in the opposite direction, about two miles away, and not more than five hundred feet above our camp. They had seen him quietly walking over the top of a hill, picking here and there at the bushes, and without waiting to find out where he had gone, they had rushed to camp to see whether I had returned from the other four bulls. I thought no more of rest, and trotted up the valley with my men, by sheep-paths winding through the thick undergrowth of aloes, and gained the base of the hill where the koodoo had been seen. There was not much time to be lost in searching for his tracks, as it was now half-past five, and the sun was nearly setting; so having lost them on stony ground near where he had last been seen, we all went in different directions to search, Géli and Hassan running about on top of the hill, and I waiting below under a screen of armo creeper which hung from a gudá thorn-tree. After a long wait Géli and Hassan could be seen coming cautiously towards me down a spur of the hill close to a deep, densely-wooded little ravine, which ran down parallel to the spur on my left. Gaining the level of the valley, and creeping from one thicket to another between the aloes, they at length reached me and pointed to a dense clump of bushes which grew half-way up the ravine, two hundred feet above me. We made a circuitous stalk by a long detour to the right, and so round the top of the hill on the farther side, and down over the head of the ravine; but this took so long that when we stalked in on the clump of bushes from above, the koodoo was no longer there, the tracks showing that he had grazed away down the hill; the bottom of this was now concealed from us by the curve of the steep ground and by the high grass, bushes, and rocks.
As we looked down the ravine we saw that to our right the valley fell from the level of my former watching-place into a V-shaped gorge, running off at right angles to the ravine. Creeping round the shoulder of the hill to the right, so as to be just above this gorge, we descended yard by yard, placing each foot carefully on the rocks and undergrowth so as to avoid making the slightest sound. The wind was in our faces as we advanced, and whenever I could get a piece of rock large enough to stand upon, and see over the high durr grass below, I slowly raised myself to an erect position, expecting to see the koodoo and get a shot. This manœuvre had been repeated three times, cautiously, so that no sound or brusque movement on our parts should attract the attention of the koodoo, if he should by any chance be in the gorge below.
As we gained the fourth group of rocks we heard the rattle of stones and crash of bushes, and saw, from behind, the horns of the koodoo rising and falling amongst the tufts of grass as he plunged down into the gorge. He paused before reaching the bottom, and we were having a whispered argument whether two objects showing motionless above the grass were the tips of his horns or spears of aloe, when they moved, and he went crashing on again.
Knowing he would have to ascend the opposite side of the V-shaped gorge, as the bushes and aloes were too thick for him to go fast along the bottom of the V to right or left, I jumped on to the rock and waited; springing across, he cantered clumsily up the other side, which was very steep. The distance was two hundred yards across the gorge, and taking a full sight I held the rifle for the withers and pulled the trigger. He fell back among the rocks and bushes, and though still breathing he was practically dead; but to prevent his moving and damaging his beautiful horns by rolling among the boulders, I gave him another shot. The horns measured 50 inches round the curve, 35½ inches in a straight line from base to tip, and 26½ inches between tips.