Maiwas Revenge | Page 5

yes, Jeffries," answered Quatermain; "you will find one of them
by the hedge, and another about fifty yards out by the plough there to
the left----"
The keeper had turned to go, looking a little astonished, when
Quatermain called him back.

"Stop a bit, Jeffries," he said. "You see that pollard about one hundred
and forty yards off? Well, there should be another woodcock down in a
line with it, about sixty paces out in the field."
"Well, if that bean't the very smartest bit of shooting," murmured
Jeffries, and departed.
After that we went home, and in due course Sir Henry Curtis and
Captain Good arrived for dinner, the latter arrayed in the tightest and
most ornamental dress-suit I ever saw. I remember that the waistcoat
was adorned with five pink coral buttons.
It was a very pleasant dinner. Old Quatermain was in an excellent
humour; induced, I think, by the recollection of his triumph over the
doubting Jeffries. Good, too, was full of anecdotes. He told us a most
miraculous story of how he once went shooting ibex in Kashmir. These
ibex, according to Good, he stalked early and late for four entire days.
At last on the morning of the fifth day he succeeded in getting within
range of the flock, which consisted of a magnificent old ram with horns
so long that I am afraid to mention their measure, and five or six
females. Good crawled upon his stomach, painfully taking shelter
behind rocks, till he was within two hundred yards; then he drew a fine
bead upon the old ram. At this moment, however, a diversion occurred.
Some wandering native of the hills appeared upon a distant mountain
top. The females turned, and rushing over a rock vanished from Good's
ken. But the old ram took a bolder course. In front of him stretched a
mighty crevasse at least thirty feet in width. He went at it with a bound.
Whilst he was in mid-air Good fired, and killed him dead. The ram
turned a complete somersault in space, and fell in such fashion that his
horns hooked themselves upon a big projection of the opposite cliffs.
There he hung, till Good, after a long and painful détour, gracefully
dropped a lasso over him and fished him up.
This moving tale of wild adventure was received with undeserved
incredulity.
"Well," said Good, "if you fellows won't believe my story when I tell
it--a perfectly true story mind--perhaps one of you will give us a better;

I'm not particular if it is true or not." And he lapsed into a dignified
silence.
"Now, Quatermain," I said, "don't let Good beat you, let us hear how
you killed those elephants you were talking about this evening just after
you shot the woodcocks."
"Well," said Quatermain, dryly, and with something like a twinkle in
his brown eyes, "it is very hard fortune for a man to have to follow on
Good's "spoor." Indeed if it were not for that running giraffe which, as
you will remember, Curtis, we saw Good bowl over with a Martini rifle
at three hundred yards, I should almost have said that this was an
impossible tale."
Here Good looked up with an air of indignant innocence.
"However," he went on, rising and lighting his pipe, "if you fellows
like, I will spin you a yarn. I was telling one of you the other night
about those three lions and how the lioness finished my unfortunate
'voorlooper,' Jim-Jim, the boy whom we buried in the bread-bag.
"Well, after this little experience I thought that I would settle down a
bit, so I entered upon a venture with a man who, being of a speculative
mind, had conceived the idea of running a store at Pretoria upon strictly
cash principles. The arrangement was that I should find the capital and
he the experience. Our partnership was not of a long duration. The
Boers refused to pay cash, and at the end of four months my partner
had the capital and I had the experience. After this I came to the
conclusion that store-keeping was not in my line, and having four
hundred pounds left, I sent my boy Harry to a school in Natal, and
buying an outfit with what remained of the money, started upon a big
trip.
"This time I determined to go further afield than I had ever been before;
so I took a passage for a few pounds in a trading brig that ran between
Durban and Delagoa Bay. From Delagoa Bay I marched inland
accompanied by twenty porters, with the idea of striking up north,
towards the Limpopo, and keeping parallel to the coast, but at a

distance of about one hundred and fifty miles from it. For the first
twenty days of