So he gave the necessary orders, and in a quarter of an hour more he and Thompson were ready for the hunt. This time they each carried a canteen filled with water, and all the dogs went with them.
This was another fatiguing day for Oscar, but, on the whole, it was an exciting and glorious one. He succeeded in shooting another fine specimen of the antelope tribe, and was the involuntary spectator of a scene he would not have missed for a good deal, but which he would not willingly have witnessed again at so close quarters under any consideration.
Such a sight as Oscar saw that day is never seen anywhere out of Africa. There was "game, game, nothing but game," all around him, but it was very wild, and would not permit him to come within range.
As fast as he advanced immense herds of wilde-beests, elands, quaggas, and zebras would scamper away to the right and left, and wheeling about like bodies of trained cavalry that were about to harass an enemy's flank, they would halt and begin feeding on the very ground the hunters had just passed over.
Having looked in vain for the koodoos among the hills and rocks, Oscar and his after-rider dismounted, under the friendly branches of a mimosa tree, to rest and eat their lunch.
"It would never do for us to go back to the wagon empty-handed, would it, Thompson?" said Oscar as he sipped the warm water from his canteen and looked with longing eyes toward the large bodies of antelopes that seemed to be gathering in the lower end of a little valley about a mile away. "And since the game will not let me go within gunshot of it, don't you suppose you could make it come to me? Couldn't you go around to leeward of it and make the dogs drive it this way?"
The Kaffir said he could.
"Of course I shouldn't stay near this tree, for there is no place to hide. I think that rock out there"—here Oscar pointed to a little boulder that lay on the plain about a quarter of a mile away—"would be a good place of concealment, don't you? Very well. Take the dogs out and see what you can do for me."
Oscar added such suggestions and instructions as he thought necessary, and when the Kaffir had finished his lunch he mounted his horse, called to the dogs, and rode away, leaving the boy to his meditations.
When he had been gone an hour Oscar picked up his rifle, and began the laborious task of creeping a quarter of a mile on his hands and knees to reach the boulder of which he had spoken.