But it is time I got back to the subject which lay in my mind when I sat down to write this epistle.  The lieutenant’s war dance took me off the track for a while, but I thought his story would come in nicely under the heading of “Hunting and Hunted.”  Camp life gets dull at times, so does camp food, the eternal round of fried flour cakes and mutton makes a man long for something which will remind him that he has still a palate, so when one of the scouts came in and told me that he had seen three herds of vildebeestes, numbering over a hundred each, and dozens of little mobs of springbok and blesbok, within ten miles of camp, away towards Doornberg, I made up my mind to ride out next day, and have a shot for luck.  My friend Driscoll, captain of the Scouts, rammed a lot of sage advice into me concerning Boers known to be in force at Doornberg.  I assured him that I had no intention of allowing myself to drift within range of any of the veldtsmen, so taking a sporting Martini I mounted my horse and set forth, intending to have a real good time among the “buck.”  At a Kaffir kraal I picked up a half-caste “boy,” who assured me that he knew just where to pick up the “spoor” of the vildebeeste, and he was as good as his boast, for within a couple of hours he brought me within sight of a mob of about fifty of the animals, calmly grazing.  I worked my way towards them as well as I could, leaving the “boy” to hold my horse; but, though I was careful according to my lights, I was not sufficiently good as a veldtsman to get within shooting distance before they saw me or scented me.  Suddenly I saw a fine-looking fellow, about as big as a year-and-a-half-old steer, trot out from the herd.  He came about twenty yards in my direction, and I had a grand chance to watch him through my strong military glasses.  He looked for all the world like a miniature buffalo bull, the same ungainly head and fore-quarters, big, heavy shoulders, neat legs, shapely barrel, light loin, and hindquarters, the same proppy, ungainly gait.  I unslung my rifle to have a shot at him, when he wheeled and blundered back to the herd, and the lot streamed off at a pace which the best hunter in England would have found trying, in spite of the clumsiness of their movements.  The half-caste grinned as he came towards me with the horses, grinned with such a glorious breadth of mouth that I could see far enough down his black and tan throat to tell pretty well what he had for breakfast.  This annoyed me.  I like an open countenance in a servant, but I detest a mouth that looks like a mere burial ground for cold chicken.  We rode on for a mile or two, and then saw a pretty little herd of springbok about eighteen hundred yards away on the left.  Slipping down into a donga, I left the horse and crawled forward, getting within nice, easy range.  I dropped one of the pretty little beauties.  I tried a flying shot at the others as they raced away like magic things through the grass, which climbed half-way up their flanks, but it was lead wasted that time.