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giraffe went rolling head over heels just like a rabbit. I never saw a
more curious thing.

"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 Kafirs; "/ou! ou!/"

They called Good "Bougwan," or Glass Eye, because of his eye-glass.

"Oh, 'Bougwan!'" re-echoed Sir Henry and I, and from that day Good's
reputation as a marvellous shot was established, at any rate among the
Kafirs. 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's
meat, we went to work to build a "scherm" near one of the pools and
about a hundred yards to its right. This is done by cutting a quantity
of thorn bushes and piling 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 peeped up, and our
dinners of giraffe steaks and roasted marrow-bones were ready. How we
enjoyed those marrow-bones, though it was rather a job to crack them!
I know of no greater luxury than giraffe marrow, unless it is
elephant's heart, and we had that on the morrow. We ate our simple
meal by the light of the moon, pausing at times to thank Good for his
wonderful shot; then we began to smoke and yarn, and a curious picture
we must have made squatting 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 civilised country,
absolutely clean, tidy, and well dressed. He wore a shooting suit of
brown tweed, with a hat to match, and neat gaiters. As usual, he was
beautifully shaved, his eye-glass and his false teeth appeared to be
in perfect order, and altogether he looked the neatest man I ever had
to do with in the wilderness. He even sported 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; "and I always like to turn out
like a gentleman." Ah! if he could have foreseen the future and the
raiment prepared for him.

Well, there we three sat yarning away in the beautiful moonlight, and
watching the Kafirs a few yards off sucking their intoxicating
"daccha" from a pipe of which the mouthpiece was made of the horn of

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