last; "but they
say they are good eating."

"There's something better," said Dyke, pointing. "I know they are
good."

"Yes, we know they are good," said Emson softly, as he slipped out of
the saddle, Dyke following his example, and both sheltered themselves
behind their horses.

"They haven't noticed us," said Emson, after a pause. "Mixed us up with
the zebras, perhaps."

"They're coming nearer. Why, there's quite a herd of them!" cried Dyke
excitedly.

They stood watching a little group of springbok playing about beyond the
herd of zebra--light, graceful little creatures, that now came careering
down toward them, playfully leaping over each other's backs, and proving
again and again the appropriate nature of their name.

And now, as if quite a migration of animals was taking place across the
plain, where for months the brothers had wandered rarely seeing a head,
herd after herd appeared of beautiful deer-like creatures. They came
into sight from the dim distance--graceful antelopes of different kinds,
with straight, curved, or lyre-shaped horns; fierce-looking gnus, with
theirs stumpy and hooked; ugly quaggas; and farthest off of all, but
easily seen from their size, great, well-fed elands, ox-like in girth.

"I never saw anything like this, Joe," said Dyke in a whisper.

"Few people ever have in these days, old fellow," said Emson, as he
feasted his eyes. "This must be like it used to be in the old times
before so much hunting took place. It shows what an enormous tract of
unexplored land there must be off to the north-west."

"And will they stay about here now?"

"What for? To starve? Why, Dyke, lad, there is nothing hardly to keep
one herd. No; I daresay by this time to-morrow there will hardly be a
hoof. They will all have gone off to the north or back to the west. It
is quite a migration."

"I suppose they take us for some kind of six-legged horse, or they would
not come so near."

"At present. Be ready; they may take flight at any moment, and we must
not let our fresh-meat supply get out of range."

"'Tisn't in range yet," said Dyke quietly.

"No, but it soon will be."

"What are you going to shoot at?--the springbok, and then mount and
gallop after them and shoot again, like the Boers do?"

"What! with big antelope about? No, boy; we want our larder filling up
too badly. Look: impalas; and at those grand elands."

"I see them; but they must be a mile away."

"Quite; but the