her hand, if they did hit, the
express bullets, being "expanding," were much more likely to bring the
game down. It was a knotty point, but I made up my mind that we must
risk it and use the expresses.

"Let each of us take the buck opposite to him. Aim well at the point of
the shoulder and high up," said I; "and Umbopa, do you give the word,
so that we may all fire together."

Then came a pause, each of us aiming his level best, as indeed a man is
likely to do when he knows that life itself depends upon the shot.

"Fire," said Umbopa in Zulu, and at almost the same instant the three
rifles rang out loudly; three clouds of smoke hung for a moment before
us, and a hundred echoes went flying over the silent snow. Presently
the smoke cleared, and revealed--oh, joy!--a great buck lying on its
back and kicking furiously in its death agony. We gave a yell of
triumph--we were saved--we should not starve. Weak as we were, we
rushed down the intervening slope of snow, and in ten minutes from the
time of shooting, that animal's heart and liver were lying before us.
But now a new difficulty arose, we had no fuel, and therefore could
make no fire to cook them. We gazed at each other in dismay.

"Starving men should not be fanciful," said Good; "we must eat raw
meat."

There was no other way out of the dilemma, and our gnawing hunger made
the proposition less distasteful than it would otherwise have been. So
we took the heart and liver and buried them for a few minutes in a
patch of snow to cool them. Then we washed them in the ice-cold water
of the stream, and lastly ate them greedily. It sounds horrible enough,
but honestly, I never tasted anything so good as that raw meat. In a
quarter of an hour we were changed men. Our life and vigour came back
to us, our feeble pulses grew strong again, and the blood went coursing
through our veins. But mindful of the results of over-feeding on
starved stomachs, we were careful not to eat too much, stopping whilst
we were still hungry.

"Thank Heaven!" said Sir Henry; "that brute has saved our lives. What
is it, Quatermain?"

I rose and went to look at the antelope, for I was not certain. It was
about the size of a donkey, with large curved horns. I had never seen
one like it before; the species was new to me. It was brown in colour,
with faint red stripes, and grew a thick coat. I afterwards discovered
that the natives of that wonderful country call these bucks "_inco_."
They are ver