ey were out of
their proper environment up there, but we were glad of it. Down on our
tummies, then, we dropped, and crawled slowly forward through the high,
sweet grasses. We were in the late afternoon shadow of the hill, and we
enjoyed the mild skill of the stalk. Taking advantage of every cover,
slipping over into little ravines, lying very flat when one of the
beasts raised his head, we edged nearer and nearer. We were already well
within range, but it amused us to play the game. Finally, at one hundred
yards, we came to a halt. The zebra showed very handsome at that range,
for even their smaller leg stripes were all plainly visible. Of course
at that distance there could be small chance of missing, and we owned
one each. The Wakamba, who had been watching eagerly, swarmed down,
shouting.

We dined just at sunset under a small tree at the very top of the peak.
Long bars of light shot through the western clouds; the plain turned
from solid earth to a mysterious sea of shifting twilights; the buttes
stood up, wrapped in veils of soft desert colours; Kilimanjaro hung
suspended like a rose-coloured bubble above the abyss beyond the world.

XXI.

RIDING THE PLAINS.

From the mere point of view of lions, lion A hunting was very slow work
indeed. It meant riding the whole of long days, from dawn until dark,
investigating miles of country that looked all alike and in which we
seemed to get nowhere. One by one the long billows of plain fell behind,
until our camp hill had turned blue behind us, and we seemed to be out
in illimitable space, with no possibility, in an ordinary lifetime, of
ever getting in touch with anything again. What from above had looked as
level as a floor now turned into a tremendously wide and placid ground
swell. As a consequence we were always going imperceptibly up and up and
up to a long-delayed sky-line, or tipping as gently down the other side
of the wave. From crest to crest of these long billows measured two or
three miles. The vertical distance in elevation from trough to top was
perhaps not over fifty to one hundred feet.

Slowly we rode along the shallow grass and brush ravines in the troughs
of the low billows, while the dogs worked eagerly in and out of cover,
and our handful of savages cast stones and shouted. Occasionally we
divided forces, and beat the length of a hill, two of us lying in wait
at one end for the possible lion, the rest sweeping the sides and
summits. Many a