Scarcely had Cazi Moto, bringing up the rear, quitted the scene when the
carrion birds swooped. They fell from the open sky like plummets, their
wings half folded. When within ten feet of the ground they checked their
fall with pinion and tail, and the sound of them was like the roar of a
cataract. Those seated on the ground moved forward in a series of ungainly
hops, trying for more haste by futile urgings of their wings. Where the
wildebeeste had fallen was a writhing, flopping, struggling brown mass. In
an incredibly brief number of seconds it was all over. The birds withdrew.
Some sat disgruntled and humpbacked in the low trees; some merely hopped
away a few yards to indulge in gloomy thoughts. A few of the more
ambitious rose heavily and laboriously with strenuous beating of pinions,
finally to soar grandly away into the infinities of the African sky. Of
the wildebeeste remained only a trampled bloody space and bones picked
clean. The jackals crept forward at last. So brief a time did all this
occupy that Maulo, looking back, saw them.

"Ho, little dogs!" he cried with one of his great empty laughs; "your
stomachs will go hollow but you can fill your noses!"

They tramped on steadily toward the low narrow line of green trees, and
the sun sank toward the hills.



CHAPTER II


THE CAMP

The game trails converged at a point where the steep, eroded bank had been