It was three in the afternoon. We had followed a herd of elephants since 8 A.M., and the traces of the dew of the previous night were still visible on the trail. Our chances of coming up with them were so small that we abandoned the pursuit and turned in the direction of the waggons. After an hour or two the natives began to make pathetic appeals to the state of their stomachs, suggesting that they had met with hard usage, and that, as we had not found the elephants, they were not above breaking their fast upon quagga, giraffe, or even rhinoceros. I tried to persuade them that elephant was the only dish worthy of them or likely to fill those almost bottomless cavities to which they had alluded; that we might have better luck the next day, and that they might put off dining till then. If you wish to be successful in hunting for large tusks, it is as well to keep your men on an elephantine diet and not pamper them with dainties, or they become lazy and careless in seeking the larger game. Whether on this particular occasion I was unusually tender-hearted, or their appeals were too touching, I do not remember; but whilst with my very poor stock of Sechuana words I was trying to explain my views, in an open glade of the forest through which we were passing, their hungry eyes fell upon two rhinoceroses of the keitloa variety, and the eager cry of ‘Ugh chukuru, mynààr!’--the last word a corruption of the Dutch mynheer, lengthened plaintively into a kind of prayer--was too much for me, and I dismounted to do their pleasure. Fifty yards before the animals ran a scanty fringe of dwarf thorn-bushes, on outliers of which they were feeding away from us. I made a long _détour_, and came out a hundred yards in front of them, the little scrubby cover lying between us. A handful of sand thrown into the air gave the direction of the wind; worming my way I gained the thorns, and, lying flat, waited for a side chance. [Illustration: FEELING BOTH HORNS OF A DILEMMA]