creating an illusion of natural bridges or lofty flat-topped cliffs with
holes clear through them to the open sky beyond. All these things
shimmered and flickered and wavered in the mirage of noon. Only the sun
itself stared clear and unchanging.

At about two o'clock Kingozi awoke and raised his voice. Mali-ya-bwana,
next in command after Cazi Moto and Simba, answered.

"Get the big gun," he was told, "and the water bottles."

Mali-ya-bwana was not a professed gun bearer, but he could load, and
Kingozi believed him staunch. Therefore, often, in absence of Simba, the
big Baganda had been pressed into this service.

The blasting heat was fiercest at this hour. The air was saturated by it
just as water may hold a chemical in solution. Every little while a wave
would beat against the cheek as though a furnace door had been opened.
Nevertheless Kingozi knew that this was also the hour when the sun's power
begins to decline; when the vertical rays begin to give place. For it is
not heat that kills, but the actinic power of rays unfiltered by a long
slant through the earth's atmosphere.

The two men tramped methodically along, paying little attention to their
surroundings. Game dozed everywhere beneath the scanty shade, sometimes
singly, sometimes in twos or threes, sometimes in herds. Motionless they
stood; and often, were it not for the switch of a tail, they would have
remained unobserved. Even the sentinel hartebeestes, posted atop high ant
hills on the outskirts of the herds, seemed half asleep. Nevertheless they
were awake enough for the job, as was evidenced when the two human figures
came too near. Then a snort brought every creature to its feet, staring.