I accordingly
trusted to ride them down and to get a shot, but I felt that the
unsteadiness of my horse would render it very uncertain. The wind
whistled in my ears as we flew along over the open plain. The grass was
not more than a foot high, and the ground hard; the giraffes about four
hundred yards distant steaming along, and raising a cloud of dust from
the dry earth, as on this side of the mountains there had been no rain.
Filfil was a contradiction; he loved a hunt and had no fear of wild
animals, but he went mad at the sound of a gun. Seeing the magnificent
herd of about fifteen giraffes before him, the horse entered into the
excitement and needed no spur--down a slight hollow, flying over the dry
buffalo holes, now over a dry watercourse and up the incline on the
other side--then again on the level, and the dust in my eyes from the
cloud raised by the giraffes showed that we were gaining in the race;
misericordia!--low jungle lay before us--the giraffes gained it, and
spurring forward through a perfect cloud of dust now within a hundred
yards of the game we shot through the thorny bushes. In another minute
or two I was close up, and a splendid bull giraffe was crashing before
me like a locomotive obelisk through the mimosas, bending the elastic
boughs before him in his irresistible rush, which sprang back with a
force that would have upset both horse and rider had I not carefully
kept my distance.
Pages:
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354