Abruptly the storm passed.  It did not die away slowly in the diminuendo of ordinary storms.  It ceased as though the reservoir had been tipped back again.  The rapid drip, drip, drip of waters now made the whole of sound; all the rest of the world lay breathless.  Then, inside our tent, a cricket struck up bravely.

This homely, cheerful little sound roused us.  We went forth to count damages and to put our house in order.  The men hunted out dry wood and made another fire; the creatures of the jungle and the stars above them ventured forth.

Next morning we marched into a world swept clean.  The ground was as smooth as though a new broom had gone over it.  Every track now was fresh, and meant an animal near at hand.  The bushes and grasses were hung with jewels.  Merry little showers shook down from trees sharing a joke with some tiny wind.  White steam rose from a moist, fertile-looking soil.  The smell of greenhouses was in the air.  Looking back, we were stricken motionless by the sight of Kilimanjaro, its twin peaks suspended a clean blue sky, fresh snow mantling its shoulders.

This day, so cheeringly opened, was destined to fulfil its promise.  In the dense scrub dwell a shy and rare animal called the lesser kudu specimens of which we greatly desired.  The beast keeps to the thickest and driest cove where it is impossible to see fifty yards ahead but where the slightest movement breaks the numberless dry interlacements of which the place seems made.  To move really quietly one could not cover over a half-mile in an hour.  As the countryside extends a thousand square miles or more, and the lesser kudu is rare, it can be seen that hunting them might have to be a slow and painful process.  We had twice seen the peculiar tracks.

On this morning, however, we caught a glimpse of the beast itself.  A flash of gray, with an impression of the characteristic harness-like stripes—­that was all.  The trail, in the ground, was of course very plain.  I left the others and followed it into the brush.  As usual the thorn scrub was so thick that I had to stoop and twist to get through it at all, and so brittle that the least false move made a crackling like a fire.  The rain of the night before had, however, softened the debris lying on the ground.  I moved forward as quickly as I could, half suffocated in the steaming heat of the dense thicket.  After three or four hundred yards the beast fell into a walk, so I immediately halted.  I reasoned that after a few steps at this gait he would look back to see whether or not he was followed.  If his scouting showed him nothing he might throw off suspicion.  After ten minutes I crept forward again.  The spoor showed my surmises to be correct, for I came to where the animal had turned, behind a small bush, and had stood for a few minutes.  Taking up the tracks from this point, I was delighted to find that the kudu had forgotten its fear, and was browsing.  At the end of five minutes more of very careful work, I was fortunate enough to see it, feeding from the top of a small bush thirty-five yards away.  The raking shot from the Springfield dropped it in its tracks.