Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/119

 two days I began to think ill of the man who originally started the story about their stupidity.

With the difficulties of the chase firmly in mind I set out early on the third day to see if I could get a specimen. Concluding that the smaller the party the better the opportunity, I took only a mule and my pony boy. When only a half mile from camp I met an old hyena who was loafing along after a night out. He looked like a good specimen, but after I shot him, one look at his dead carcass was enough to satisfy me that he was not as desirable as I had thought, for his skin was badly diseased. I had very good reason to think of this very hard later in the day. A little farther along I shot a good wart hog for our scientific collection. Leaving the specimen where it lay, I marked the spot and continued in search of the plume-bearers.

Soon after this I climbed to the top of a termite hill about eight feet high to look the country over with field glasses. As I held the glasses to my eyes while adjusting the focus, I suddenly realized that the letter S that I was focussing on was the head and neck of an ostrich and that there was a second letter S beside it. The birds remained perfectly motionless watching and I did likewise, locating their position meanwhile by the termite hills which were nearly in line between us. Suddenly the heads ducked and disappeared behind the bush. I dropped from my perch and ran rapidly to where they had been, but found only their trail in the sand.

When I had given up tracking them and was about