ght find other game soon, for the hartebeeste is a gregarious
animal. Suddenly we saw a medium-sized squat beast that none of us
recognized, trundling along like a badger sixty yards ahead. Any
creature not easily identified is a scientific possibility in Africa.
Therefore we fired at once. One of the bullets hit his foreleg paw.
Immediately this astonishing small creature turned and charged us! If
his size had equalled his ferocity, he would have been a formidable
opponent. We had a lively few minutes. He rushed us again and again,
uttering ferocious growls. We had to step high and lively to keep out of
his way. Between charges he sat down and tore savagely at his wounded
paw. We wanted him as nearly perfect a specimen as possible, so tried to
rap him over the head with a club. Owing to remarkably long teeth and
claws, this was soon proved impracticable; so we shot him. He weighed
about fifty pounds, and we subsequently learned that he was a honey
badger, an animal very rarely captured.

We left the boys to take the whole skin and skull of this beast, and
strolled forward slowly. The brush ended abruptly in a wide valley. It
had been burnt over, and the new grass was coming up green. We gave one
look, and sank back into cover.

The sparse game of the immediate vicinity had gathered to this fresh
feed. A herd of hartebeeste and gazelle were grazing, and five giraffe
adorned the sky-line. But what interested us especially was a group of
about fifty cob-built animals with the unmistakable rapier horns of the
oryx. We recognized them as the rarity we desired.

The conditions were most unfavourable. The cover nearest them gave a
range of three hundred yards, and even this would bring them directly
between us and the rising sun. There was no help for it, however. We
made our way to the bushes nearest the herd, and I tried to align the
blurs that represented my sights. At the shot, ineffective, they raced
to the right across our front. We lay low. As they had seen nothing they
wheeled and stopped after two hundred yards of flight. This shift had
brought the light into better position. Once more I could define my
sights. From the sitting position I took careful aim at the largest
buck. He staggered twenty feet and fell dead. The distance was just 381
paces. This shot was indeed fortunate, for we saw no more fringe-eared
oryx.

XXVII.

ACROSS THE SERENGETTI.

We arrived in camp about noon, almost exhausted with t