at deal of listening and peeping, as the day
was so warm that we expected the elephants would be clustered together
in some shady glen, and would not move until we were right upon them.
As we were seated, listening, Monyosi suddenly looked up attentively at
a tree near us, and seemed to think that all was not as it should be. I
asked him what was wrong, when he said he did not know, but that a bird
had flown to a tree near us, stayed a little while, and had then gone
away. By the manner in which it had hopped about, he could see that it
was alarmed at something; and it would not have flown towards us, had
its flight been occasioned by our noise. I thought the cause a slight
one; but still, it is the dust, not the rock, that indicates the wind's
direction. Monyosi did not seem easy, but proposed that we should
proceed in the direction from whence the bird had approached us. We did
so, and after one hundred yards sat down to listen. Presently a very
slight crack of a branch or bit of stick caused our guns to be raised to
full cock, and we to peep about between the branches for a sight at
whatever it might be. The game was very cunning, and for full two
minutes there was not a move on either side; our patience, however, was
the greater, as we soon heard two or three light steps from the
suspicions quarter. I saw a smile on Monyosi's face; he uncocked his
gun, and gave a low whistle, which was responded to by another in the
bush a few yards distant. Soon after, a young English lad, born and
bred in the colony, and two Kaffirs, all three armed with guns, came
quietly up to us. I knew the boy, and he informed me that he was after
the elephants, but, hearing our approach, could not make us out; he
thought that he caught a glimpse of something rather red, which was
really my untanned leather breeches, and that he fancied it was a
red-buck; but the glance was so slight, that he could not be quite
certain. He consoled me, however, by saying "he should not have fired
at me unless he knew that the elephants were a long way off." We had
stood listening one to the other for about three minutes, and the bird
that flew past had given the alarm to Monyosi.

How would some of my friends compete in war singly with black men like
this? But fancy one hundred such against perhaps twenty young soldiers
inexperienced in the colonial cunning, and laughing contemptuously at
the black niggers to whom they are going to give a licking!