Six Months at the Cape | Page 6

like mere specks in the distance.
Presently I saw two or three of them break into a gallop, and observed a
few moving spots of white on the horizon. I looked anxiously at my
boy. He returned the gaze with glittering eyes and said "bok."
"Boks! are they?" said I, applying my spur and making a leap over an
ant-bear hole.
Rob Roy stretched his legs with a will, but a howl from Michael caused

me to look round. He was trending off in another direction, and
pointing violently towards something. He spoke nothing but Dutch. My
acquaintance with that tongue was limited to the single word "Ja."
He was aware of this, and his visage became all eyes and mouth in his
frantic effort to assure me it would be wise were I to follow his lead.
I turned at once and galloped alongside of him in faith.
It soon became clear what he aimed at. The horsemen on the far off
horizon were driving the springboks towards the stream which bounded
one side of the great plain, Mike was making for the bushes that
bordered that stream in the hope of reaching them before the boks
should observe us.
Oh! it was a glorious burst, that first race over the wild Karroo, on a
spirited steed, in the freshness of early morning--
With the silent bushboy alone by my side,
for he was silent, though tremendously excited. His brown rags
fluttered in the self-made breeze, and his brown pony scrambled over
the ground quite as fast as Rob Roy. We reached a clump of underwood
in time, and pulled up, panting, beside a bush which was high enough
to conceal the horses.
Anxiously we watched here, and carefully did I look to my rifle,--a
double-barrelled breech-loading "Soaper-Henry,"--to see that it was
loaded and cocked, and frequently did I take aim at stump and stone to
get my hand and eye well "in," and admiringly, with hope in every
lineament, did Michael observe me.
"See anything of them, Mike?" I asked.
I might as well have asked a baboon. Mike only grinned, but Mike's
grin once seen was not easily forgotten.
Suddenly Mike caught sight of something, and bolted. I followed. At

the same moment pop! pop! went rifles in different parts of the plain.
We could not see anything distant for the bushes, but presently we
came to the edge of an open space, into which several springboks were
trotting with a confusedly surprised air.
"Now, Sar,--now's you chance," said Mike, using the only English
sentence he possessed, and laying hold of the bridle of my horse.
I was on the ground and down on one knee in such a hurry, that to this
day I know not by what process I got off the horse.
Usually, when thus taken by surprise, the springboks stop for a moment
or two and gaze at the kneeling hunter. This affords a splendid though
brief chance to take good aim, but the springboks were not inquisitive
that day. They did not halt. I had to take a running shot, and the ball fell
short, to my intense mortification. I had sighted for three hundred yards.
Sighting quickly for five hundred, while the frightened animals were
scampering wildly away, I put a ball in the dust just between the legs of
one.
The leap which that creature gave was magnificent. Much too high to
be guessed at with a hope of being believed! The full significance of
the animal's name was now apparent. Charging a breech-loader is rapid
work, but the flock was nine hundred or a thousand yards off before I
could again take aim. In despair I fired and sent a bullet into the midst
of them, but without touching one.
I now turned to look at the "boy," who was sitting on his pony with
both eyes nearly shut, and a smile so wide that the double row of his
teeth were exposed to the very last grinders!
But he became extremely grave and sympathetic as I turned towards
him, and made a remark in Dutch which was doubtless equivalent to
"better luck next time."
Remounting I rode to the edge of the clump of bushes and found
several of my companions, some of whom carried the carcasses of
springboks at their cruppers. Hope revived at once, and I set off with

them in search of another flock.
"You've failed, I see," remarked my friend Jonathan Hobson in a
sympathetic tone.
Ah! what a blessed thing is sympathy!
"Yes," said I; "my shots fell short."
"Don't let that discourage you," returned Jonathan, "you're not used to
the Karroo. Distance is very deceptive. Sighting one's rifle is the chief
difficulty in these regions, but you'll soon come to it."
Another flock of springboks