Not over two hundred yards in that direction we met our camp men
bearing torches, and so were escorted in triumph after a sixteen-hour
day.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] "The Land of Footprints."
[30] Six months after I had reached home, one of these thorns worked its
way out of the calf of my leg.
XLVI.
THE GREATER KUDU.
Next morning, in a joking manner, I tried to impress Kongoni with a
sense of delinquency in not knowing better his directions, especially as
he had twice traversed the route. He declined to be impressed.
"It is not the business of man to walk at night," he replied with
dignity.
And when you stop to think of it, it certainly is not--in Africa.
At this camp we lingered several days. The great prize of our journeying
was still lacking, and, to tell the truth, we had about given up hope,
if not our efforts. Almost we had begun to believe our friends in
Nairobi who had scoffed at the uselessness of our quest. Always we
conscientiously looked over good kudu country, hundreds of miles of it,
and always with the same lack of result, or even of encouragement. Other
game we saw in plenty, of a dozen different varieties, large and small;
but our five weeks' search had thus far yielded us only the sight of the
same old, old sign, made many months before. If you had stood with us
atop one of the mountains, and with us had looked abroad on the
countless leagues of rolling brush-clothed land, undulating away in all
directions over a far horizon, you must with us have estimated as very
slight the chances of happening on the exact pin point where the kudu at
that moment happened to be feeding.
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