"But how are you going to do it?"
"Oh, we'll do it somehow," the Colonel replied good-naturedly. And the visitors shook their heads a little and smiled and changed the subject.
But to attempt to rope a rhinoceros or a lion required fresh horses, and ever since we had left Nairobi, nearly a fortnight ago, we had worked our horses hard every day. Now that we had reached the land of the big game, the Colonel for the first time called a day of rest. So we loafed about camp from sunrise to sunset and by evening were heartily sick of it all.
Perhaps we had expected too much of this Sotik country; perhaps the expedition was running, temporarily, in a streak of bad luck; but the fact remains that when we resumed hunting on March 18, disappointment only followed disappointment.
As we had done in the Rift Valley, so here we adopted the method of sweeping the country with a widely extended line. The first day we rode far to the southward, to the Hot Springs and back, and found nothing, and an unreasoning depression settled upon the expedition. The next day we rode still farther, to the westward this time, and again found nothing, and so the depression deepened. Also on the afternoon of this day it rained heavily, and Curry agreed with Ulyate that this probably meant the beginning of the rainy season, which was already overdue.
That night at the supper table the Colonel spoke his mind. The rain was dripping through the canvas fly overhead, and the Colonel wore his broad-brimmed hat to help keep the water off his plate.
"There's no use hanging round here any longer," he said, "not a bit of use. We haven't seen anything, nor a sign of anything. When the rains begin in earnest, this ground will soften fast an' the horses will get bogged an' we'll have to quit. So from now on we've got to work fast. Now Ulyate says there's water about twelve miles from here to the north—called the Soda Swamp. We'll start for the Soda Swamp in the morning."
Again it was moving day. The morning dawned fine after the rain, and the air was clear, and the country looked greener and fresher than it had ever looked before. By the time the sun rose, the first wagon was packed, so the safari set out on the journey, leaving the second wagon to load and follow our tracks, for there was no road to the Soda Swamp.
At the last moment the Colonel decided that he and the cowboys might just as well make a circuit to the westward of the line of march on the off chance of finding game.
"We covered that district pretty thoroughly yesterday," he said.
"But still, you never can tell."