and finally drives it into
another tree, and flies eat my lunch, or breakfast rather, and ants eat
me, and I gnaw my pipe with vexation.

I go over all excuses--new rifle--far too heavy--accustomed to single
barrel--unaccustomed to blaze of light,--Really, at the first shot, the
rising sun on backsight and foresight made them sparkle like diamonds,
and the buck in shadow was a ghost--and being out of condition with
travel--and so on and so on--and say fool at the end.--We get up after
half-an-hour, but my belief in my luck is shaken; we walk into the heat
again and dazzling light and white hard sandy soil and come to bushes
and patches of corn here and there, and natives lifting water for them
from wells.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I've had a grand day's exercise, and feel much more human and fit again.
I've sent a soul into the invisible so my man tells me--shot a buck at
full split--shot it aft a bit. As its gore dyed the hard hot earth and
its exquisite side, I asked my tall Mohammedan guide, when it was dead,
where its soul had gone. "To God," he said shortly--"And where will mine
go?" "To Hell," he replied quite politely but firmly, but he added to
qualify the statement, something about some Mohammedans believing in
reincarnation. I suppose I am damned in his opinion because I am not a
follower of the prophet, not because I have taken life, but damned or
not it wasn't a bad shot; it was the fourth time too, I spotted deer
before my shikari, and pulled him back in time, and so in a way I felt
comforted for bad shooting.

Five does and no buck were visible, but we trusted the buck was hidden
by some of the soft feathery green ferash bushes they were feeding in.
We made a circuit and came close to a group of natives and oxen drawing
water, and for some reason or another, possibly the guide I'd left
behind alarmed the deer, they came galloping past and a buck with a very
good head in the middle; a doe beyond, passing to the front made me hit
him a little far back in lumbar region, instead of behind the shoulder.
It restored my faith in hand and eye a little, and yet the killing
qualified the day's enjoyment. I suppose we will never quite understand
whether we should or should not kill. I suppose killing this buck will
save a little of the natives' corn, and they will have some meat and I
shall have a head to show.

To see these exquisitely graceful deer galloping across