rose swiftly into the air with mighty, threshing strokes that
simply hurled them aloft like powerful projectiles--into the heavens, as
it were terrible avenging spirits of the tempest. A chaos, a rush, a
mighty blast of air, and--they were gone!

Then the laird turned to Pig Head, and, "Mon, ye dinna ken th' laird. If
ye did--w-e-e-l, Ah'm thinkin' ye'd understand."

XVII

RATEL, V.C.

Between the clumps of the stunted acacias the sun beat down with the
pitilessness of a battleship's furnace, and it was not much better in the
acacias themselves. Save for a lizard here and there, motionless as a
bronze fibula, or a snake asleep with eyes wide open, or the flash of a
"pinging" fly, all Nature seemed to have fled from that intolerable
white-hot glare and gone to sleep.

But the hour of emancipation was at hand, and the dim caverns of
shade--what there was of it--stirred strangely. A hundred yards away a
blotch of shadow beneath a group of stunted trees swayed and broke up
into several zebra moving off to water. Fifty yards distant the inky
shade that carpeted the earth under a bare outcrop of rock gave up a
single gnu antelope bull and a Grant's gazelle whose lyrate horns were as
wonderful as his consummate grace.

Thereafter came sound. Till then there had been only heat, the first
hints at movement, and the terrifying silence of the wilderness. Even
the birds had been dumb. Now came "a feathered denizen of the grove"
with a peculiarly arresting, grating chatter, a noise no one could
overlook, and few could help investigating. And finally, brazenly,
impudently, excitedly flitting from branch to branch, the chatterer
evolved slowly out of the ragged bush-choked landscape, a dusky little
bird, seemingly a bird of no importance, scarce larger than a lark.

Putting personal appearance aside, however, this feathered one, who dared
to shatter the slumber of the everlasting wilderness, seemed to be under
the impression that he was of vast importance. Moreover, his business
appeared to be pressing and urgent, so that he could neither brook delay
nor take "No" for an answer. It was as though he was under a desperate
need to take you somewhere or show you something, and YOU must follow
him--_must_; there was nothing else for it.

But nobody cared. The zebra trooped off without turning their striped
heads; the gazelle, weighted under his horns, and the gnu bull stalked
away unattending; the lizards remaine