Part 12 (2/2)

”I have thought of this,” said he, ”and I have tied the thong, so, in order that it come aith one pull; and I snatch it off, so, with ht hand It seeood to keep the cover on, for there are ht is very easy to injure”

Of course this was good sense, and enious; Fundi bade fair to be quite a boy, but the native African is very easily spoiled Therefore, althoughof the sort

”A gunbearer carries the gun away from the branches,” was my only comment

Shortly after occurred an incident by way of deeper test We were all riding rather idly along the easy slope below the foothills The grass was short, so we thought we could see easily everything there was to be seen; but, as we passed some thirty yards from a small tree, an unexpected and unnecessary rhinoceros rose froreen hollow beneath the tree, and charged us He ht for Billy Her mule, panic-stricken, froze with terror in spite of Billy's attack with a parasol I spurredbrute, with so off the other side as the rhino struck F and B leaped from their own animals, and F, with a little28 calibre rifle, took a hasty shot at the big brute

Now, of course a28 calibre rifle would hardly injure a rhino, but the bullet happened to catch his right shoulder just as he was about to coht foot The shock tripped hih he had been upset by a rope At the same instant Billy's mule came to its senses and bolted, whereupon I too juer snaps of tiround, Fundi passed the double rifle across the horse's back to s to the credit of Fundi: in the first place, he had not bolted; in the second place, instead of running up to the left side ofht side and passed the rifle to me ACROSS the horse

I do not knohether or not he had figured this out beforehand, but it was cleverly done

The rhinoceros rolled over and over, like a shot rabbit, kicked for a moment, and came to his feet We were now all ready for hih He turned at right angles and trotted off, apparently-and probably-none the worse for the little bullet in his shoulder

Fundi now began acquiring things that he supposed befitting to his dignity The first of thesefeather Froot it all, on what credit, or hat hypnotic power, I do not know

Probably he hypothecated his wages, certainly he had his five rupees

At any rate he started out with a ragged undershi+rt and a pair of white, baggy breeches He entered Nairobi at the end of the trip with a cap, a neat khaki shi+rt, tater bottles, a cartridge belt, a sash with a tassel, a pair of spiral puttees, an old pair of shoes, and a personal private se tribes, to carry his cooking pot, enerally perform his lordly behests This was indeed ”more-than-oriental-splendour!”

Frounbearer I had no use for hiive hierness He had to be rapped pretty sharply and a good number of times before he discovered that he reallys I cured by liberal sarcasm His intense desire to take his own line as perhaps opposed toabout on trail, I abated kindly but firmly with the toe of my boot His evident but mistaken tendency to consider hiiving him the hard and dirty work to do But his faults were never those of voluntary oly that he began to get quite cocky over it Not that he was ever in the least aggressive or disrespectful or neglectful-it would have been easy to deal with that sort of thing-but he carried his head pretty high, and evidently began to have mental reservations Fundi needed a little wholeso his porter days, and was rapidly counbearer

The occasion soon arose We were returning from a buffalo hunt and ran across two rhinoceroses, one of which carried a splendid horn B

wanted a well developed specimen very h, and at seventy yards or so B knocked her flat with a bullet from his465 Holland The beast was immediately afoot, but was as promptly smothered by shots from us all So far the affair was very simple, but now came complication The second rhinoceros refused to leave We did not want to kill it, so we spent a lot of ti it away We showered rocks and clods of earth in his direction; we yelled sharply and whistled shrilly The brute faced here and there, his pig eyes blinking, his snout upraised, trying to locate us, and declining to budge At length he gave us up as hopeless, and trotted away slowly We let hiht he had quite departed, we approached to examine B's trophy

Whereupon the other craftily returned; and charged us, snorting like an engine blowing off steae, as opposed to a blind rush, and it is offered as a good example of the sort

The rhinoceros had coht for F and s happened very quickly F and I each planted a heavy bullet in his head; while B sent a lighter Winchester bullet into the ribs The rhino went down in a heap eleven yards away, and one of us promptly shot him in the spine to finish him

Personally I was entirely concentrated in theaction-and got very few iined, subconsciously that I had heard four shots F and B disclaimed ed hter Winchester, and we started for ca all the boys to attend to the dead rhinos At camp I thren the lever of my Winchester-and drew out an exploded shell!

Here was a double criun, a thing no bearer is supposed ever to do in any circu of his master

Naturally this is so, for the white ency to depend ABSOLUTELY on his second gun being loaded and ready for his need

In the second place, Fundi had given me an empty rifle to carry home

Such a weapon is worse than none in case of trouble; at least I could have gone up a tree in the latter case I would have looked sweet snapping that old cartridge at anything dangerous!

Therefore after supper we stationed ourselves in a row before the fire, seated in our canvas chairs, and with due forunbearers They came and stood before us Meht in the eye; Mavrouki slightly bent forward, his face alive with the little crafty, calculating s with htened, but uncertain as to whether or not he had been found out

We stated the matter in a feords

”Gunbearers, this ed, fired Winchi