“This,” explained the king, as we dashed through the natural gateway at the head of the galloping regiment, “is the exercise ground where I bring my regiments from time to time to exercise them in the tactics of war.”
“And a very excellent place it is for such a purpose,” I agreed, as my eye took in the wide area of level, unbroken ground. “There is room enough here in which to fight a battle of quite respectable dimensions. But what are those moving objects yonder?” I interrupted myself eagerly, as my gaze was arrested by a group of some ten or a dozen dark dots moving slowly among the long grass at the opposite extremity of the valley. “Surely they must be buffalo, or I am greatly mistaken.”
“You are not mistaken, they are buffalo; and you have a marvellously sharp eye, white man,” returned the king. Then he flung up his hand, and the galloping regiment came to a sudden halt, reining-in their sweating horses so sharply as to throw the animals back upon their haunches. At the same moment we also reined up. Then the king called his indunas round him, instructing one of them to take fifty men, and with them ride round the outside of the basin until they reached the only other exit from the valley, and block it, so that the buffalo might not escape through it; while a second induna was also to take fifty men and block the exit through which we had just passed, thus rendering escape from the valley an impossibility, for, as the king now informed me, the surrounding cliffs were everywhere vertical, so that no animal, save, perhaps, a baboon, could possibly enter or leave the basin except by one or the other of the two natural gateways in the cliff.
“Now, white man,” said the king, turning to me with sparkling eyes and pointing toward the buffalo, “there is your opportunity. Kill me two or three of those with your fire weapon, and then you shall see how the Basuto hunt buffalo.”
“Very well,” I said; “I will see what I can do. But we shall have to get very much nearer to them than we are at present; for even my fire weapon will not kill at such a distance as that.”
“No?” demanded the king. “Then how close must you get before it will kill?”
“Oh,” I said, “perhaps one-sixth of the present distance of the buffalo.”
The king was evidently disappointed to learn that there was a limit to the range of the rifle, and for the moment seemed inclined to regard it somewhat contemptuously. Without wasting further words upon so very ineffective a weapon, he proceeded to issue his orders to the other indunas, in obedience to which the regiment divided itself into two, one half riding to the left and the other to the right, and stringing themselves out, single file, close in under the shadows of the overhanging cliffs, where they quickly became so inconspicuous as to be practically invisible. Then, accompanied by a body of twenty picked men, who spread themselves out in open order in our rear, the king and I advanced toward the buffalo at a slow walking pace.
It fortunately happened that the wind was blowing across the basin directly from the buffalo toward us, consequently it was a long while before the brutes became aware of our presence; indeed, we had arrived within about three-quarters of a mile of them before they betrayed any sign of uneasiness, and even then it was toward the upper end of the valley, and not toward us, that their attention seemed to be directed.
“It is Bulangu and his party that they scent,” said the king, referring to the squadron of men whom he had sent round outside the basin to bar the upper exit; and, sure enough, a minute or two later the whole herd swung round and began to move toward us. But the moment that this occurred they of course caught sight of us and at once came to a halt, tossing their heads impatiently, lashing their flanks with their tails, and emitting low, moaning bellows of annoyance. After a short pause, however, accompanied by the display of many indications of rapidly increasing anger, the herd again began to move toward us, first at a walking pace that rapidly merged into a trot, till finally the whole herd broke into a gallop as the induna Bulangu and his party appeared at the far end of the plain.