in faith.

It soon became clear what he aimed at. The horsemen on the far off
horizon were driving the springboks towards the stream which bounded one
side of the great plain, Mike was making for the bushes that bordered
that stream in the hope of reaching them before the boks should observe
us.

Oh! it was a glorious burst, that first race over the wild Karroo, on a
spirited steed, in the freshness of early morning--

With the silent bushboy alone by my side,

for he _was_ silent, though tremendously excited. His brown rags
fluttered in the self-made breeze, and his brown pony scrambled over the
ground quite as fast as Rob Roy. We reached a clump of underwood in
time, and pulled up, panting, beside a bush which was high enough to
conceal the horses.

Anxiously we watched here, and carefully did I look to my rifle,--a
double-barrelled breech-loading "Soaper-Henry,"--to see that it was
loaded and cocked, and frequently did I take aim at stump and stone to
get my hand and eye well "in," and admiringly, with hope in every
lineament, did Michael observe me.

"See anything of them, Mike?" I asked.

I might as well have asked a baboon. Mike only grinned, but Mike's grin
once seen was not easily forgotten.

Suddenly Mike caught sight of something, and bolted. I followed. At
the same moment pop! pop! went rifles in different parts of the plain.
We could not see anything distant for the bushes, but presently we came
to the edge of an open space, into which several springboks were
trotting with a confusedly surprised air.

"Now, Sar,--now's you chance," said Mike, using the only English
sentence he possessed, and laying hold of the bridle of my horse.

I was on the ground and down on one knee in such a hurry, that to this
day I know not by what process I got off the horse.

Usually, when thus taken by surprise, the springboks stop for a moment
or two and gaze at the kneeling hunter. This affords a splendid though
brief chance to take good aim, but the springboks were not inquisitive
that day. They did not halt. I had to take a running shot, and the
ball fell short, to my intense mortification. I had sighted for three
hundred yards. Sighting quickly for five hundred, while the frightened
animals were scampering wildly away, I put a ball in the dust just
between the legs of one.

The leap which that creature gave was magnificent. Much too high to be
guessed at with a hope of being believed! The full