when stalking big game, for if you follow any other system the bearers
will get out of line. We arrived within three hundred yards safely
enough, and then the real difficulties began. The grass had been
so closely eaten off by game that there was scarcely any cover.
Consequently it was necessary to go on to our hands and knees, which
in my case involved laying down the eight-bore at every step and then
lifting it up again. However, I wriggled along somehow, and if it had
not been for Gobo and his friend no doubt everything would have gone
well. But as you have, I dare say, observed, a native out stalking is
always of that mind which is supposed to actuate an ostrich--so long as
his head is hidden he seems to think that nothing else can be seen. So
it was in this instance, Gobo and the other boy crept along on their
hands and toes with their heads well down, but, though unfortunately
I did not notice it till too late, bearing the fundamental portions of
their frames high in the air. Now all animals are quite as suspicious of
this end of mankind as they are of his face, and of that fact I soon had
a proof. Just when we had got within about two hundred yards, and I was
congratulating myself that I had not had this long crawl with the sun
beating on the back of my neck like a furnace for nothing, I heard the
hissing note of the rhinoceros birds, and up flew four or five of them
from the brute's back, where they had been comfortably employed in
catching tics. Now this performance on the part of the birds is to a
rhinoceros what the word 'cave' is to a schoolboy--it puts him on the
_qui vive_ at once. Before the birds were well in the air I saw the
grass stir.

"'Down you go,' I whispered to the boys, and as I did so the rhinoceros
got up and glared suspiciously around. But he could see nothing, indeed
if we had been standing up I doubt if he would have seen us at that
distance; so he merely gave two or three sniffs and then lay down, his