the side opposite to our camp. During
the night I woke up, thinking that I heard some big beasts moving in
these reeds; but as no further sounds reached my ears I went to sleep
again.

Shortly after dawn I was awakened by a voice calling me, which in a hazy
fashion I recognised as that of Umbezi.

"Macumazahn," said the voice in a hoarse whisper, "the reeds below us
are full of buffalo. Get up. Get up at once."

"What for?" I answered. "If the buffalo came into the reeds they will go
out of them. We do not want meat."

"No, Macumazahn; but I want their hides. Panda, the King, has demanded
fifty shields of me, and without killing oxen that I can ill spare I
have not the skins whereof to make them. Now, these buffalo are in a
trap. This swamp is like a dish with one mouth. They cannot get out
at the sides of the dish, and the mouth by which they came in is very
narrow. If we station ourselves at either side of it we can kill many of
them."

By this time I was thoroughly awake and had arisen from my blankets.
Throwing a kaross over my shoulders, I left the hut, made of boughs,
in which I was sleeping and walked a few paces to the crest of a rocky
ridge, whence I could see the dry vlei below. Here the mists of dawn
still clung, but from it rose sounds of grunts, bellows and tramplings
which I, an old hunter, could not mistake. Evidently a herd of buffalo,
one or two hundred of them, had established themselves in those reeds.

Just then my bastard servant, Scowl, and Saduko joined us, both of them
full of excitement.

It appeared that Scowl, who never seemed to sleep at any natural time,
had seen the buffalo entering the reeds, and estimated their number at
two or three hundred. Saduko had examined the cleft through which they
passed, and reported it to be so narrow that we could kill any number of
them as they rushed out to escape.

"Quite so. I understand," I said. "Well, my opinion is that we had
better let them escape. Only four of us, counting Umbezi, are armed with
guns, and assegais are not of much use against buffalo. Let them go, I
say."

Umbezi, thinking of a cheap raw material for the shields which had been
requisitioned by the King, who would surely be pleased if they were made
of such a rare and tough hide as that of buffalo, protested
violently, and Saduko, either to please one whom he hoped might be his
father-in-law or from sheer love of sport, for which he always had a
positive passion, backed h