We could march no more, and sank down exhausted, lying on our faces,
because our backs were so cut by the driving sand and blistered by
the sun that we could not sit. By now almost all our water was gone.
Suddenly Higgs nudged us and pointed upwards. Following the line of his
hand, we saw, not thirty yards away and showing clear against the sky,
a file of antelopes trekking along the sand-ridge, doubtless on a night
journey from one pasturage to another.

"You fellows shoot," he muttered; "I might miss and frighten them away,"
for in his distress poor Higgs was growing modest.

Slowly Orme and I drew ourselves to our knees, cocking our rifles. By
this time all the buck save one had passed; there were but six of them,
and this one marched along about twenty yards behind the others. Orme
pulled the trigger, but his rifle would not go off because, as he
discovered afterwards, some sand had worked into the mechanism of the
lock.

Meanwhile I had also covered the buck, but the sunset dazzled my
weakened eyes, and my arms were feeble; also my terrible anxiety for
success, since I knew that on this shot hung our lives, unnerved me. But
it must be now or never; in three more paces the beast would be down the
dip.

I fired, and knowing that I had missed, turned sick and faint. The
antelope bounded forward a few yards right to the edge of the dip; then,
never having heard such a sound before, and being overcome by some fatal
curiosity, stopped and turned around, staring at the direction whence it
had come.