My coffee-coloured retainer gathered up the spoil, and paid me a compliment concerning my shooting, though well I knew he had sized me up as a “wastrel” with a rifle, for his shy eyes gave the lie to his oily tongue.  We hunted round for awhile, and then from the top of a little kopje I saw a beautiful herd of vildebeestes one hundred and sixteen in number, lumbering slowly towards where we stood.  The wind blew straight from them towards us, so that I had no fear on the score of scent.  Climbing swiftly down until almost level with the veldt, I lay cosily coiled up behind a rock, and waited for the quarry.  They came at last, Indian file, about a yard and a half separating one from the other, not a hundred and twenty yards from where I lay.  I had plenty of time to pick and choose, and plenty of time to take aim, so did not hurry myself.  Sighting for a spot just behind the shoulder, I sent a bit of lead fair through a fine beast, and expected to see him drop, but he did nothing of the kind.  For one brief second the animal stood as if paralysed; then, with a leap and a lurch, he dashed on with his fellows.  I fired again, straight into the shoulder this time, and brought him down; but he took a third bullet before he cried peccavi.  I had a good time for pretty near the whole of that day, and was lamenting that I had not brought a Cape cart and pair of horses with me to bring home the spoil, when, happening to look into the face of my brown guide, I saw that his complexion had turned the colour of blighted sandalwood.  He did not speak, but swift as thought ripped out his knife, and cut the thongs which bound the springbok and other trophies of the day’s sport to his saddle, letting everything fall in an undignified heap on to the veldt.  Then, without a word of farewell, or any other kind of word for that matter, he drove his one spur into the flank of his wretched nag, and fled round the bend of a kopje, which, thank Providence, was close handy, and as he went I saw something splash against a rock a dozen yards behind him.  I had glanced hurriedly over the veldt the moment I caught that queer expression on the saffron face of my assistant, but as far as the eye could reach I could see nothing.  Now, however, looking backwards, I saw three or four men riding out of a donga two thousand five hundred yards away.

Twenty-five seconds later I had caught and passed my fleeing servant, who was heading for some kopjes, which lay right in front, about a mile and a half away.  As I passed him he yelled, “Booers, baas, Booers!  Ride hard, baas, ride hard; there are three hundred in the donga.”  When I heard that item of news I just sat down and attended strictly to business, and I am free to wager that never since the day he was foaled had that horse covered so much ground in so short a space of time as he did by the time he reached the kopjes.  My servant had adroitly dodged into a sluit which hid him from view, and I knew that he could work his way out far