t had given it the
start backward; so he continued to press forward to the head of the
ravine.

He might have thought of lions, and acted with greater prudence; but the
trampling of hoofs which still echoed up the pass told him that lions
were not the cause of the eland's alarm.

He at length reached a point where he could see down the declivity. He
had not far to look--for already the animals that were making the noise
were close up to him; and he perceived they were nothing more than a
troop of quaggas.

He was not over-pleased at this interruption to his drive; and the less
did he like it, that the intruders were quaggas--ill-conditioned brutes
that they were! Had they been game animals, he would have shot one; but
the only motive that would have induced him to shoot one of the quaggas
would have been a feeling of anger--for, at that moment, he was really
angry at them.

Without knowing it, poor brutes! they had likely given him cause for a
good deal of trouble: for it would cost him a good deal, before he could
head the eland again, and get it back into the pass. No wonder, then, he
was vexed a little.

But his vexation was not so grievous as to cause him to fire upon the
approaching herd; and, turning aside, he rode after the eland.

He had hardly left the spot, when the quaggas came out of the pass,
following each other to the number of forty or fifty. Each, as he saw
the mounted hunter, started with affright, and bolted off, until the
whole drove stretched out in a long line over the plain, snorting and
uttering their loud "coua-a-g" as they ran.

Hendrik would hardly have regarded this movement under ordinary
circumstances. He had often seen herds of quaggas, and was in no way
curious about them. But his attention was drawn to this herd, from his
noticing, as they passed him, that four of them had their tails docked
short; and from this circumstance, he recognised them as the four that
had been caught in the pit-trap and afterwards set free. Swartboy, for
some purpose of his own, had cut off the hair before letting them go.

Hendrik had no doubt it was they, and that the herd was the same that
used to frequent the vley, but that on account of the ill-treatment they
had met with, had never since shown themselves in the neighbourhood.

Now these circumstances coming into Hendrik's mind at the moment, led
him to regard the quaggas with a certain feeling of curiosity. The
sudden fright which the animals t