I tried walking in circles in the hopes of cutting the wheel tracks, but though on a previous occasion this plan had succeeded, it now failed. As with empty gun I plodded on, occasional small herds of rooyebuck and blue wildebeest, evidently very much at home, swept and capered by me, and, stopping and looking at me with wondering eyes, increased my feeling of loneliness. I had no doubts of regaining my party next day at latest, and cared but little for passing a night in the jungle; but, bewildered and baffled, I envied the instinct of the so-called brutes, which, careless of their steps, were nevertheless quite sure of their ways. Twilight near the tropics is very short. Just before the sun set, therefore, I followed a game track which I knew would lead to water, as it was still early in the season, and the rain supply had not yet dried up in the hollows. At dusk I reached a pool similar to the one I had quitted in the morning. After a good draught I began collecting firewood, but for once it was very scarce, and the night closed in so rapidly, that a bare hour’s supply was all my store. Partly to save fuel, and partly in the hope that as the night crept on signals would be made from the waggons, I climbed a tree which stood by the side of the water, and had not been long perched before I heard, though so far off that I could hardly catch the sound, the smothered boom of guns. Alarmed at my absence my companions suspected the cause, and were inviting my return: but it required a very pressing invitation indeed to induce a man to walk through two miles of an African wood in those days on a dark night.