"Curse it!" said Good - for I am sorry to say he had a habit of using strong language when excited - contracted no doubt, in the course of his nautical career; "curse it, I've killed him."

"Ou, Bougwan," ejaculated the Kaffirs; "ou! ou!"

They called Good "Bougwan" (glass eye) because of his eyeglass.

"Oh! `Bougwan' !" re-echoed Sir Henry and I; and from that day Good's reputation as a marvelous shot was established, at any rate among the Kaffirs. Really he was a bad one, but whenever he missed we overlooked it for the sake of that giraffe.

Having set some of the "boys" to cut off the best of the giraffe meat, we went to work to build a "scherm" near one of the pools about a hundred yards to the right of it. This is done by cutting a quantity of thorn bushes and laying them in the shape of a circular hedge. Then the space enclosed is smoothed, and dry tambouki grass, if obtainable, is made into a bed in the centre, and a fire or fires lighted.

By the time the "scherm" was finished the moon was coming up, and our dinner of giraffe steaks and roasted marrow-bones was ready. How we enjoyed those marrow-bones, though it was rather a job to crack them! I know no greater luxury than giraffe marrow, unless it is elephant's heart, and we had that on the morrow. We ate our simple meal, pausing at times to thank Good for his wonderful shot, by the light of the full moon, and then we began to smoke and yarn, and a curious picture we must have made squatted there round the fire. I, with my short grizzled hair sticking up straight, and Sir Henry with his yellow locks, which were getting rather long, were rather a contrast, especially as I am thin and short and dark, weighing only nine stone and a half, and Sir Henry is tall and broad and fair, and weighs fifteen. But perhaps the most curious-looking of the three, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, was Captain John Good, R.N. There he sat upon a leather bag, looking just as though he had come in from a comfortable day's shooting in a civilized country, absolutely clean, tidy, and well- dressed. He had on a shooting-suit of brown tweed, with a hat to match, and neat gaiters. He was, as usual, beautifully shaven, his eyeglass and his false teeth appeared to be in perfect order, and altogether he was the nearest man I ever had to do with in the wilderness. He even had on a collar, of which he had a supply, made of white gutta-percha.

"You see, they weigh so little," he said to me, innocently, when I expressed my astonishment at the fact; "I always liked to look like a gentleman."

Well, there we all sat yarning away in the beautiful moonlight, and watching the Kaffirs a few yards off sucking their intoxicating "daccha" in a pipe of which the mouthpiece was made of the horn of an eland, till they one by one rolled themselves up in their blankets and went to sleep by the fire, that is, all except Umbopa, who sat a little apart (I noticed he never mixed much with the other hairs), his chin resting on his hand apparently thinking deeply;

Presently, from the depths of the bush behind us came a loud "woof! woof!"

"That's a lion," said I, and we all started up to listen. Hardly had we done so, when from the pool, about a hundred yards off. came the strident trumpeting of an elephant. "Unkungunklovo! Unkungunklovo!" (elephant! elephant!) whispered the Kaffirs; and a few minutes afterwards we saw a succession of vast shadowy forms moving slowly from the direction of the water towards the bush. Up jumped Good, burning for slaughter, and thinking, perhaps, that it was as easy to kill elephant as he had found it to shoot giraffe, but I caught him by the arm and pulled him down.

"It's no good," I said, "let them go."

"It seems that we are in a paradise of game. I vote we stop here a day or two, and have a go at them," said Sir Henry, presently.