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Updated: June 16, 2025
The traveller and Simba watched closely, with expert eyes, to determine whether a precious second cartridge should be expended. "Where?" asked the white man briefly. "Low in the shoulder," replied Simba. The wildebeeste plunged wildly here and there, kicking, bucking, menacing the unseen danger with his horns. For several seconds longer the two watched, then rose leisurely to their feet.
My daughter Heda is away, and my partner Mr. Still, we can make you comfortable and even give you a decent bottle of wine." "No, thank you very much," I answered, "we must get back to the wagon or our servants will think that we have come to grief. Perhaps you will accept the wildebeeste if it is of any use to you." "Very well," he said in a voice that suggested regret struggling with relief.
For miles of its course this was filled with swamp, out of which tall reeds grew. Game was very abundant. I shot several blesbuck and wildebeeste, I am sorry to say, for the gratification of mere lust of slaughter, as I could not possibly carry away the meat. In passing over a graveled ridge I noticed a dried drop of blood. I looked more closely and found the tracks of some large animal.
In this very high grass the game was rather scarce, but after we had climbed by insensible grades to the shorter growth we began to see many hartebeeste, zebra, and gazelles, and a few of the wildebeeste, or brindled gnus.
When within ten feet of the ground they checked their fall with pinion and tail, and the sound of them was like the roar of a cataract. Those seated on the ground moved forward in a series of ungainly hops, trying for more haste by futile urgings of their wings. Where the wildebeeste had fallen was a writhing, flopping, struggling brown mass.
Therefore I was left alone with the dead wildebeeste and with the circling aas-vogels for upwards of two hours, and I realized, as I had never done before, the intense loneliness of the veldt, and something of what the horror must be of being lost on it. Even residents have to dread this danger.
So we jogged out on the road to Long Juju, examining with a critical eye the herds of game to right and left of us. The latter examined us, apparently, with an eye as critical. Finally, in a herd of zebra, we espied a lone wildebeeste. The wildebeeste is the Jekyll and Hyde of the animal kingdom. His usual and familiar habit is that of a heavy, sluggish animal, like our vanished bison.
On hearing the usual salutation, however, I turned round and saw a lean and withered half-bred Masai, clothed in a very inadequate piece of wildebeeste hide which was merely slipped under the left arm and looped up in a knot over the right shoulder.
Just then, however, I saw a herd of wildebeeste, and with much care managed to get within three hundred yards of them. I singled out the biggest head and waiting for a favourable moment, fired at him, dropping him at once. I ran up to the fallen beast, which appeared to be dying, and told Mahina to drive the hunting knife right through his heart so as to put him quickly out of all pain.
There, not fifty yards away, I caught sight of a single blue wildebeeste bull standing in the shadow of the trees on the further side of the glade, and pointed out the ugly beast, for it is the most grotesque of all the antelopes, to Anscombe. "Off you get," I whispered. "It's a lovely shot, you can't miss it." "Oh, can't I!" replied Anscombe. "Do you shoot."
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