Beryl looked wholly fresh and delightful as she welcomed us, and it was
hard to believe she had been up nearly three hours "seeing to things,"
as Brian put it. There was a good deal of talk, of wholly local
interest, with regard to the expeditions of both father and son, and the
results thereof, but even it was by no means without interest to me,
for, after all, it let me into so much of the inner life of these
strange new surroundings. Presently the young hopeful, looking up from
a large plateful of oatmeal porridge and milk, observed--
"I say, Brian, let's go down to Zwaart Kloof this morning and try for a
bushbuck ram."
"Well, I don't know. Yes. Perhaps Mr Holt would like to try his luck.
What do you say, Holt?"
I said I'd like nothing better, but for the trifling drawback that I had
no gun--being only a shipwrecked mariner who had come away with nothing
but the clothes he stood up in. But this was speedily over-ruled.
There were plenty of guns in the house. No difficulty about that.
"Can you shoot, Mr Holt?" said the youngster, planting both elbows on
the table, and eyeing me with rather disdainful incredulity.
"Well, yes, I can shoot," I said. "Moderately, that is."
"But you're out from England," went on the cub, as though that settled
the matter.
"George, you little ass, shut up, and go and tell them to saddle up Bles
and Punch for us," said Brian. "You can ride Jack."
A volume of expostulation in favour of some other steed having been
silenced by Brian in quiet and peremptory fashion, the hopeful went out.
"I'm afraid you'll find George rather a spoilt boy, Mr Holt," said
Beryl. "He and Iris seem to get their own way more than they ought.
They are the little ones, you see."
Of course I rejoined that it was quite natural--reserving my own
opinion. In the case of the little girl it was candid: in the other--
well "boy" to me is apt to spell horror; but a spoilt boy, and just a
boy of George Matterson's age, well--to fit him, my vocabulary has never
yet been able to invent an adequate superlative.
"You'd better have a shot gun, Holt," said Brian, as we started. "I
always use one in thick bush; it's all close shooting."
He handed me a double Number Twelve bore, of first-rate make and poise,
and kept in first-rate order too, and some treble A cartridges.
"You won't use all those. You'll be lucky if you get two fair and
square shots," he remarked.
"Good luck, Mr Holt," called out Beryl after us.
I began to feel nervous. I was only an ordinary shot, and of this form
of sport was, of course, utterly without experience--and said as much.
"You only shoot tame pheasants in England, don't you, Mr Holt?" said
George, in a tone that made me wish I could turn him into one of the
fowl aforesaid. Could it really be 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 lightning it shot across
the open, and my left barrel spoke, a fraction of a second before it
disappeared over the declivity. But in that fraction of a second I had
seen the convulsive start, the unmistakable squirm, and could have
hurrahed aloud.
I remained still, however, slipping in a couple of fresh cartridges.
Another might come out. But it did not; instead, the dogs appeared hot
foot on the scent, and close behind them George.
"Hallo, Mr Holt. Where's the buck?" cried that youth, with a derisive
grin. "Man, but we drove him right over you."
"And I've driven him right over there," pointing to the brow of the
declivity.
"So it seems. Man! but you won't get such a chance again in a hurry."
"Well, Holt? No luck, eh?" said Brian, appearing on the scene.
"Well, it depends on whether you look at it from my point of view or the
buck's," I said with designed coolness. "If the latter, you're right."
"Eh? Why--"
Something of a clamour beneath interrupted him: the fierce worrying of
dogs, and the half bellow, half scream, of a bush-buck ram in the last
fight for his life. We did not pause a moment then. Flinging
themselves from their horses--mine had been left much higher up--they
plunged down, I following, leaping from rock to rock. There lay my
quarry, unable to rise save on his forelegs, yet savagely menacing with
his pointed horns the three dogs which were leaping and snarling
frantically around him.
"He's done for--hit rather far back, though," said Brian, calling off
the dogs. "Put another shot into him, Holt--forward this time."