Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick ( Chapter 10 )( Page 2 ) Jocks Night Out

It is not necessary to go over it all again: it was much the same as the impala chase.  I came back tired, disappointed and beaten, and without Jock.  It was only after darkness set in that things began to look serious.  When it came to midnight, with the camp wrapped in silence and in sleep, and there was still no sign of Jock, things looked very black indeed. I heard his panting breath before it was possible to see anything.  It was past one o'clock when he returned. As we had missed the night trek to wait for Jock I decided to stay on where we were until the next evening and to have another try for the wounded koodoo, with the chance of coming across the troop again. By daybreak Jock did not seem much the worse for his night's adventures--whatever they were.  There were no marks of blood on him this time; there were some scratches which might have been caused by thorns during the chase, and odd-looking grazes on both hind quarters near the hip-bones, as though he had been roughly gravelled there.  He seemed a little stiff, and flinched when I pressed his sides and muscles, but he was as game as ever when he saw the rifle taken down. The koodoo had been shot through the body, and even without being run to death by Jock must have died in the night, or have lain down and become too cold and stiff to move.  If not discovered by wild animals there was a good chance of finding it untouched in the early morning; but after sunrise every minute's delay meant fresh risk from the aasvogels.  There is very little which, if left uncovered, will escape their eyes.  You may leave your buck for help to bring the meat in, certain from the most careful scrutiny that there is not one of these creatures in sight, and return in half an hour to find nothing but a few bones, the horns and hoofs, a rag of skin, and a group of disgusting gorged vultures squatting on a patch of ground all smeared, torn and feather-strewn from their voracious struggles. In the winter sky unrelieved by the least fleck of cloud--a dome of spotless polished steel--nothing, you would think, can move unseen.  Yet they are there.  In the early morning, from their white-splashed eeries on some distant mountain they slide off like a launching ship into their sea of blue, and, striking the currents of the upper air, sweep round and upwards in immense circles, their huge motionless wings carrying them higher and higher until they are lost to human sight.  Lie on your back in some dense shade where no side-lights strike in, but where an opening above forms a sort of natural telescope to the sky, and you may see tiny specks where nothing could be seen before.  Take your field-glasses: the specks are vultures circling up on high!  Look again, and far, far above you will see still other specks; and for aught you know, there may be others still beyond.  How high are they?  And what can they see from there?  Who knows?  But this is sure, that within a few minutes scores will come swooping down in great spiral rushes where not one was visible before.  My own belief is that they watch each other, tier above tier away into the limitless heavens—watching jealously, as hungry dogs do, for the least suspicious sign--to swoop down and share the spoil. In the dewy cool of the morning we soon reached the place where Jock had left me behind the evening before; and from that on he led the way.  It was much slower work then; as far as I was concerned, there was nothing to guide me, and it was impossible to know what he was after.  Did he understand that it was not fresh game but the wounded koodoo that I wanted?  And, if so, was he following the scent of the old chase or merely what he might remember of the way he had gone?  It seemed impossible that scent could lie in that dry country for twelve hours; yet it was clearly nose more than eyes that guided him.  He went ahead soberly and steadily, and once when he stopped completely, to sniff at a particular tuft of grass, I found out what was helping him.  The grass was well streaked with blood: quite dry, it is true; still it was blood. A mile or so on we checked again where the grass was trampled and the ground scored with spoor.  The heavy spoor was all in a ring four or five yards in diameter; outside this the grass was also flattened, and there I found a dog's footprints.  But it had no further interest for Jock; while I was examining it he picked up the trail and trotted on. We came upon four or five other rings where they had fought.  The last of these was curiously divided by a fallen tree, and it puzzled me to guess how they could have made a circle with a good-sized trunk some two feet high intersecting it.  I examined the dead tree and found a big smear of blood and a lot of coarse greyish hair on it.  Evidently the koodoo had backed against it whilst facing Jock and had fallen over it, renewing the fight on the other side.  There were also some golden hairs sticking on the stumpy end of a broken branch, which may have had something to do with Jock's scraped sides.  Then for a matter of a hundred yards or more it looked as if they had fought and tumbled all the way.  Jock was some distance ahead of me, trotting along quietly, when I saw him look up, give that rare growling bark of his--one of suppressed but real fury--lower his head, and charge.  Then came heavy flapping and scrambling and the wind of huge wings, as twenty or thirty great lumbering aasvogels flopped along the ground with Jock dashing furiously about among them--taking flying leaps at them as they rose, and his jaws snapping like rat-traps as he missed them.