The Colonel called a halt.
"There is no lion anywhere hereabouts," he said, "because the game are grazing peacefully. But there is a bunch of eland yonder. We might as well round them up while the light lasts."
The plan of operation was quickly made. The cameras were stationed about a mile to the southeast, partly concealed by the bole of a tree, and the bunch of eland were skillfully rounded up and a good specimen was singled out.
Everything was working to perfection. The three horsemen drove the eland toward the cameras—not directly at them, but a little to one side, at an angle, as Kearton wanted it done. At the proper moment Loveless roped the animal by the forelegs and neck, and threw it down. Loveless jumped from his horse and was running forward to tie the prize when something—the smell of the strange beast, perhaps—started the black horse bucking. With the rope made fast to the saddle and the eland acting as a pivot, the black went careering round and round. Both the Colonel and Means tried to rope him, and missed, and finally Loveless, on foot, caught him by the dangling reins.
Of course such a thing might have been readily foreseen, but somehow it came as a surprise and opened up grave possibilities. That night in camp at "Rugged Rocks" we were gathered about the cook s fire for the warmth it gave, when the Colonel spoke of the affair.
"Everything was going great till that horse started bucking," the Colonel remarked. "We've got to teach our horses not to mind the smell of these strange animals out here. We've got to be able to depend absolutely on our horses. Of course that eland wasn't dangerous. But when we tackle something else and a horse acts that way, it might be bad."
But Gobbet said it was good action, anyway, and would look fine when thrown on the screen.
March 8 was a day of disappointments. Between sunrise and sunset we traveled fifteen miles to the Wangai River and hunted in turn a pair of lions, a cheetah, and a rhinoceros—and lost them all. Two circumstances were held accountable: one was the necessity of getting the horses to water, and the other was the fact that it was just a bad luck day all through.
We came upon the lions early in the morning, close to the base of the southern volcano. This particular pair of lions must have been shot over at one time or another, for they did not wait to satisfy any curiosity as to our intentions, but fled at once for the safety of the mountain. Although we gave chase immediately, their lead was so great and the distance to the mountains so short, that they were soon lost to us in the gullies and crevices of the foothills.
It was while we were trying to pick up the lost trail of the lions that we flushed a cheetah out of one of the dongas.[2] It broke away along the foothills, and finally stopped at bay in a district where the going was so bad for the horses that we had to give up the attempt.