We settled down quite happily.  The country round about was full of game; the weather was cool, the wide sweeps of country, the upward fling of mountains and buttes were much like some parts of our great West.  Almost every evening the thunderstorms made gorgeous piled effects in the distance.  At night the lions and hyenas roared or howled, and some of the tiny fever owls impudently answered them back.

Various adventures came our way, some of which have been elsewhere narrated.  Here we killed the very big buffalo that nearly got Billy.[29] In addition, we collected two more specimens of the Neuman’s hartebeeste, and two Chanler’s reed buck.

But Mavrouki’s glowing predictions as to roan were hardly borne out by facts.  According to him the mountains simply swarmed with them—­he had seen thirty-five in one day, etc.  Of course we had discounted this, but some old tracks had to a certain extent borne out his statement.

Lunch time one day, however, found us on top of the highest ridge.  Here we hunted up a bit of shade, and spent two hours out of the noon sun.  While we lay there the sky slowly overcast, so that when we aroused ourselves to go on, the dazzling light had softened.  As time was getting short, we decided to separate.  Memba Sasa and Mavrouki were to go in one direction, while C., Kongoni and I took the other.

Before we started I remarked that I was offering two rupees for the capture of a roan.

We had not gone ten minutes when Kongoni turned his head cautiously and grinned back at us.

“My rupees,” said he.

A fine buck roan stood motionless beneath a tree in the valley below us.  He was on the other side of the stream jungle, and nearly a mile away.  While we watched him, he lay down.

Our task now was to gain the shelter of the stream jungle below without being seen, to slip along it until opposite the roan, and then to penetrate the jungle near enough to get a shot.  The first part of this contract seemed to us the most difficult, for we were forced to descend the face of the hill, like flies crawling down a blackboard, plain for him to see.

We slid cautiously from bush to bush; we moved by imperceptible inches across the numerous open spaces.  About half-way down we were arrested by a violent snort ahead.  Fifteen or twenty zebras nooning in the brush where no zebras were supposed to be, clattered down the hill like an avalanche.  We froze where we were.  The beasts ran fifty yards, then wheeled, and started back up the hill, trying to make us out.  For twenty minutes all parties to the transaction remained stock still, the zebras staring, we hoping fervently they would decide to go down the valley and not up it, the roan dozing under his distant tree.

By luck our hopes were fulfilled.  The zebra turned downstream, walking sedately away in single file.  When we were certain they had all quite gone, we resumed our painful descent.