that this impudent young pup was
Beryl's brother--or Brian's too, for the matter of that?

We cantered down the valley, then struck up a lateral spur, and rounding
it came upon a deep kloof running far up into the hillside--its side
black with dense bush, the _boerboen_ and plumed euphorbia, and half a
dozen other varieties whose names I didn't know then.

"Here, Tiger, Ratels, get to heel!" cried Brian, apostrophising the
rough-haired dogs which had followed, all excited, at our horses' heels.
"George, take Mr Holt on to the opening above the little krantz. You
know where to post him. If he doesn't get a shot there he won't get one
anywhere. Then come back to me."

We made a bit of a circuit, and some twenty minutes later found
ourselves in a little open space, surrounded on three sides by dense
bush, while the fourth seemed to be the brink of a precipitous fall in
the ground. Here I was carefully posted in the combined cover of an
ant-heap and a small mimosa.

"That's where they always break cover," whispered George. "Man, but you
mustn't make a sound. Don't move--don't cough, even. So long."

Left alone, my nerves were all athrill with excitement, and I believe my
hand shook. A couple of spreuws perched upon an adjoining bush,
melodiously whistling, then, become mysteriously aware of my presence,
flashed off--a pair of green-blue streaks, their note changed to one of
alarm. Would they scare the game and turn it back? I thought
agonisingly. Heavens! what if I should shoot badly, and miss? What a
fool I should look--and this was, in a way, my _debut_!

The space the quarry would have to cross was about twenty yards. Could
I stop it in that distance? No, I was sure I could not. I was feeling
far too shaky, far too eager--a nervous condition invariably fatal, at
any rate in my own case, to effective execution.

The silence settled down around me, broken only by the occasional note
of a bird. Then I started. What was that? The yapping of a dog, then
another, then a chorus of excited yelps; and as it drew rapidly nearer I
realised that they were on the track of something.

Exactly from the direction George had indicated, it came--a quick
bounding rush. A noble antelope leapt out into the open. Its pointed,
slightly spiral horns and dilated eye, the almost black hide with the
white belly stripe, seemed photographed in my brain as I pressed the
trigger, and--missed. Like a streak of dark lightnin