dance of two miles, hell for leather, at a terrific pace
through the very thorniest jungle she could pick; and although I
presently ranged close up to her rump, and with my third bullet (firing
from my horse) brought her down with a crash, she had taken pretty heavy
toll of me. My flannel shirt was torn to ribbons, and my chest and
shoulders were rarely gashed about. Never hunt `camel', gentlemen, in
thick bush, without a stout coat on; that's the advice of an old
veldt-man, and it's worth remembering. I ought to have known better
that day, but I was not prepared for game at that particular moment.

"Well, I stuck my knife into the cow's back and found her well covered
with fat, and the Masarwa coming up soon after, we set to work to skin
and cut her up. Presently, having fastened about twenty pounds of meat
to my saddle, and carrying the long, prehensile tongue dangling far
below my belt, I saddled up, leaving the Masarwa, who had a calabash of
water, to finish the job and wait for the wagon to pick him up next
morning.

"I myself took a sweep north-north-east, with the intention of working
round to the wagon before sundown.

"I had not left the Masarwa half an hour, when I suddenly, to my intense
surprise, cut the spoor of a wagon running pretty well east and west,
and going westward. It was not fresh, but at the same time not very old
either. It might have been a month or two old at most. `Now,' thought
I, `what in the mischief does this mean?' Very few hunters use this
veldt. I knew Khama had sent no wagons that way this season, and the
only white man in front of us this year was Dirk Starreberg, one of the
few Dutch hunters to whom Khama gave permission to hunt in his veldt.
Starreberg's wagon it could only be. And yet it struck me as strange
that Dirk, whom I knew well--for he was a noted interior hunter--should
be trekking in this veldt. He was, I knew, bound for the Victoria
Falls. Probably, like ourselves, enticed by the unwonted water supply
and the possibility of a slap at the elephants, he had turned off
somewhere between Nata River and Daka, and pushed across for the Chobe.
Thus reasoning, I turned my horse's head, and, with the westering sun
now on my right flank, struck homeward for the wagon. I rode on for
half a mile, and then came another strange thing. As I crossed an open
glade I saw coming towards me the figure of a man. I knew in a moment
who it was. The slouching walk, the big,