He camped there just before noon, and at three o’clock on the following morning, in the company of his shikari, his skinner and his donkey-boy he was riding along a narrow path high above the river.  It was very dark, so that even with the vast blaze of stars overhead, Hillyard could hardly see the flutter of his shikari’s white robe a few paces ahead of him.  They passed a clump of bushes and immediately afterwards heard a great shuffling and lapping of water below them.  The shikari stopped abruptly and seized the bridle of Hillyard’s donkey.  The night was so still that the noise at the water’s edge below seemed to fill the world.  Hillyard slipped off the back of his donkey and took his rifle from his boy.

“Gamus!” whispered the shikari.

Hillyard almost swore aloud.  There was a creek, three hours’ march away, where the reed buck came down to drink in the morning.  For that creek Hillyard was now making with a little Mannlicher sporting rifle—­and he had tumbled suddenly upon buffalo!  He was on the very edge of the buffalo country, he would see no more between here and the houses of Senga.

It was his last chance and he had nothing but a popgun!  He was still reproaching himself when a small but startling change took place.  The snuffling and lapping suddenly ceased; and with the cessation of all sound, the night became sinister.

The shikari whispered again.

“Now they in their turn know that we are here.”  He enveloped the donkey’s head in a shawl that he was carrying.  “Do not move,” he continued.  “They are listening.”

Shikari, skinner, donkey-boy, donkey and Hillyard stood together, motionless, silent.  Hillyard had come out to hunt.  Down below the herd in its dumb parliament was debating whether he should be the hunted.  There was little chance for any one of them if the debate went against them.  Hillyard might bring down one—­perhaps two, if by some miraculous chance he shot a bullet through both forelegs.  But it would make no difference to the herd.  Hillyard pictured them below by the water’s edge, their heads lifted, their tails stiffened, waiting in the darkness.  Once the lone, earth-shaking roar of a lion spread from far away, booming over the dark country.  But the herd below never stirred.  It no more feared the lion than it feared the four men on the river bank above.  An hour passed before at last the river water plashed under the trampling hoofs.

Hillyard threw his rifle forward, but the shikari touched him on the arm.

“They are going,” he whispered, and again the four men waited, until the shikari raised his hand.

“It will be good for us to move!  They are very near.”  He looked towards the east, but there was no sign yet of the dawn.

“We will go very cautiously into the forest.  We shall not know where they are, but they will know everything we are doing.”

In single file they moved from the bank amongst the mimosas, the donkey with his head covered, still led by the boy.  Under the cavern of the branches it was black as pitch—­so black that Hillyard did not see the hand which the shikari quietly laid upon his shoulder.