ide he wore a
wonderful powder-horn, decked with silver, and over his back a brown
leather bag, smothered with steel mountings, the flash of which you
might see a mile off. He carried a good English rifle. His Hottentot
boy, besides a fowling-piece, carried a green net and a lot of boxes.
The little Frenchman collected butterflies and bird-skins, and he never
went abroad without his full paraphernalia. I have seen some funny
sights in the veldt, but never have I seen such a figure of a sportsman
as Pierre Cellois.

"Well, the little Frenchman, it seems, had come up to the Transvaal to
shoot game and to collect specimens for a museum. He had read a book by
your English army officer, Captain Harris, who was up in the country
just before we turned out Moselikatse and his Matabele. Though he was
an Englishman, Harris was a right good sportsman. I saw him in our
laager in 1837, and his wagons were crammed with horns and skins and
ivory. Cellois had Harris's book with him, a great book--I saw it
afterwards on Gordon Cumming's wagon in Bamangwato--full of capital
coloured pictures of game. Little Cellois used to rave over that book,
and fling his arms about, and slap his rifle, and altogether send me
nearly dying with laughter. But, bless you, Pierre was no sportsman; I
could see that at once with half an eye. He had the best of rifles,
powder-horns, knives, pistols, everything else--but he hadn't the pluck,
without which a man in the veldt in those days might surely turn his
wagons and go home. I have seen him peppering away at a rhinoceros at a
hundred and a hundred and fifty yards--teasing the great beast, and
tickling its hide, and making it mad, but doing nothing more.

"Well, we hunted together during the afternoon of the day I met him, and
I shot a big white rhinoceros bull--about the easiest beast a man could
shoot. The Frenchman hadn't seen a rhinoceros shot before, and he
nearly went out of his mind. He danced about, cried out with joy, and
then rushing up to me, put his arms round my neck and kissed me--yes,
kissed me, the little fool! Pah! I couldn't stand that, and I gave him
a bit of a push, and sent him over on his back. He picked himself up
and seemed rather angry, but we became good friends afterwards. Next
day we came across elephants, and I shot three good bulls, and a cow
with long teeth. I was finishing off the last bull, when Pierre
Cellois, who had kept very much in the background so f