That night, as he was smoking by the fire, he called out to the
Ma-ongwi boy. The lad came forward from his hut behind the wagon.

"Tell me how you lost him," said Norris.

"He rode that way alone after a sable antelope." The boy pointed an
arm to the southwest. "The beast was wounded, and we followed its
blood-spoor. We found Mr. Barrington's horse gored by the antelope's
horns. He himself had gone forward on foot. We tracked him to a little
stream, but the opposite bank was trampled, and we lost all sign of
him." This is what the boy said though his language is translated.

Norris remained upon this encampment for a fortnight. Blue
wildebeests, koodoos, elands, and gems-bok were plentiful, and once he
got a shot at a wart-hog boar. At the end of the fortnight he walked
round the ant-heap early one morning, and of a sudden plumped down
full length in the grass. Straight in front of him he saw a herd of
buffaloes moving in his direction down a glade of the forest a quarter
of a mile away. Norris cast a glance backwards; the camp was hidden
from the herd by the intervening ant-heap. He looked again towards the
forest; the buffaloes advanced slowly, pasturing as they moved. Norris
crawled behind the ant-heap on his hands and knees, ran thence into
the camp, buckled on a belt of cartridges, snatched up a 450-bore
Metford rifle, and got back to his position just as the first of the
herd stepped into the open. It turned to the right along the edge of
the wood, and the others followed in file. Norris wriggled forward
through the grass, and selecting a fat bull in the centre of the line,
aimed behind its shoulder and fired. The herd stampeded into the
forest, the bull fell in its tracks.