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Once when I was travelling in Namaqua-land, I observed a spot which was imprinted with at least twenty spoors or marks of the lion's paw; and as I pointed them out, a Namaqua chief told me that a lion had been practising his leap.
He had proceeded for some little distance and had about reached a point where he judged he would find the street which led up from the city gate when, at an intersection of two streets, his nostrils caught the scent spoor of the girl. Out of a maze of other scent spoors the ape-man picked the familiar odor of the girl and, a second later, that of Smith-Oldwick.
Of lions we saw but little, though their spoors were abundant, and occasionally we heard them at night; the spoors of leopards were everywhere but these wily animals are seldom seen unless hunted for and often a pack of the dreaded wild hunting-dogs would stream across our path in pursuit of its quarry.
"Yes, we searched; but the storm had changed the whole aspect of the dunes, and the spoors lay buried under many feet of sand, and well, Carfax was never seen again!" Jason ended his narrative abruptly, and, rising, lit his pipe with an ember from the dying fire and stood gazing across the river to where the vague mysterious dunes of German West showed silver-white beyond the farther bank.
One crack of the rifle rolled her over, and gave me free scope to improve the bag, which was very soon done; for on following the spoors, the traces of blood led us up to another one as lame as the last.
To return would be difficult, for the storm had passed that way and all our spoors would be obliterated; moreover, we had gone out of our path so far when following the fire that I was by no means certain as to the absolute direction.
Not till then did Stanley give us an account of his adventures. "The first thing we did," he said, "was to dig some shallow pits, with boughs over them, in which we could conceal ourselves from the beasts which might approach the stream. We saw by the spoors that numerous animals were accustomed to come there.
Here was the spot, here was the place where he had half scared me with his weird story of being followed, and where I had half believed myself that I had seen the follower. Here, for the wind had once more blown the sand from out the filled-in footprints, were our spoors mine meeting his; here we turned back; but what was this?
"In any case," remarked Wilmshurst, "the two spoors lead the same way, so we'll carry on." Half a mile further the tracks separated, the older ones continuing straight on, those of the boots breaking away to the left. After a brief debate the pursuers decided to follow the latter spoor. This they followed for another four miles until it vanished on an expanse of hard, sun-baked ground.
Tari Barl indicated that the scouts had followed two distinct spoors for more than a couple of miles without actually sighting any of the retiring enemy. Acting upon this information the advance guard marched into the ground on which the Huns had recently halted.
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