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Updated: June 14, 2025
It's the humour of aasvogels watchin' a shot rock-rabbit kick. It's the humour of the battledore and the shuttlecock. And I'm the dicky-bird's mate and the bunny's better-half, and the other shuttlecock of the pair, and may I be blessed if I can take it smilin'!" He mops his scarlet and dripping face, and puffs and blows like a large military walrus on dry land.
"Vultures sit or fly there also, Hans; and I would see how they fly, that I may know when and where to shoot at them." "That is right, baas," said the clever Hottentot. "This is not like firing at geese in the Groote Kloof. The geese go straight, like an assegai to its mark. But the aasvogels wheel round and round, always on the turn; it is easy to miss a bird that is turning, baas." "Very easy.
I only sat down and buried my face in my hands. One more such miss, and then Hans began to whisper to me. "Baas," he said, "those aasvogels see the flash of the gun, and shy at it like a horse. Baas, you are shooting into their faces, for they all hang with their beaks toward you before they drop. You must get behind them, and fire into their tails, for even an aasvogel cannot see with its tail."
The thirty-mile ride through the lonely country would have been delightful but for the dismal trail left by the war carcases of horses and oxen lining the road, a carcase every few hundred yards surrounded by a gorged flock of aasvögels, the foulest of the vulture tribe.
Within a minute they had all gone, and the Hottentot and I were left alone. "That is good," I said. "You played well." "Good! baas," he answered, "and I with two cuts in my nose in which I can lay my finger, and bites all over me. Look how my trousers are torn. Look at my head where is the hair? Look at my nose. Good! Played well! It is those verdomde aasvogels that played.
A few seconds later the vultures rose from their interrupted repast, flying almost immediately over the prone form of the subaltern. "Fishy very," mused Wilmshurst. "What made the aasvogels fly this way? I'll sit tight and await developments."
Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the loathsome birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting till they could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. Instinctively she drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as though to protect it from the evil flying things. She forced between his lips a little more water. "God make it easy!" she said.
"Hans," I said, "I am going to pretend to kill you, and then you must lie quite still out there like one dead. Even if the aasvogels settle on you, you must lie quite still, so that I may see whence they come and how they settle." The Hottentot did not take at all kindly to this suggestion. Indeed, he flatly refused to obey me, giving sundry good reasons.
By the Living Tinker, I should have thought that this siege life would have put iron into a man's blood instead of of Crème de Menthe. Are you takin' those dashed morphia tabloids of Taggart's for bad-water collywobbles again? Yes? I thought as much. Chuck 'em to the aasvogels; stick to your work you can't complain of its lackin' interest or variety and let this girl alone.
For all along the way bright tin biscuit canisters of the Army Service Corps shone like diamonds in the sun; and all along the way, at intervals, tired and sick old cavalry horses stood by the roadside, each surrounded by a crowd of foul aasvögels, the vultures of South Africa, waiting. The chief party of Boers which we encountered was at Abraham's Kraal.
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