My friends did not return on March 2, as they had expected. I took my rifle and a guide and tried to bring home an ariel, but could not approach within three hundred yards of the game. At about that distance one was hit, but got away. On the 3rd the guide and I went in another direction. Creeping carefully up against the wind, I aimed at a buck at three hundred yards’ distance. He fell forward, burying his horns in the ground, when I fired, but was up again, and ran in a circle and then fell once more. I rushed forward to give him the _coup-de-grace_, but he bolted over the brow of a hill at the top of his speed, and we lost sight of him. I wandered about seeking for his tracks, but could not find them in that tumbled country. Later I saw three more ariels, which ran into some dry grass. We made a circuit, and presently came within sight of them again. They were evidently on the alert. Under cover of a tree, I took a steady aim and hit a buck, who limped away and lay down, but presently rose at eighty yards distance as we advanced, and I then killed him by a shot through the heart. We covered the body with branches to protect it from vultures, and carried the head into camp. I kept the skin and the head, but gave the flesh to my guide, who was much delighted. He went out on a donkey and cut the beast up, and distributed presents of meat among his friends. [Illustration: SOUDANESE WITH AMULETS. _See p._ 189.] [Illustration: AT THE WELL, GORATIA. _See p._ 190] My companions returned half an hour after midday. They had had difficulty in finding the course of the Atbara, and their camels had been on the march eight hours when they reached it at a gorge in coarse sandstone rock, where the river forces its way through a narrow cleft about twenty metres wide, between cliffs rising vertically from a profoundly deep pool. There they determined to encamp and spend the next day in attempting to find the junction of the rivers. To the great disappointment of all, they failed to achieve their purpose. The country in which they were is extremely wild. A lion had killed one of their camels in broad daylight. The boy who was in charge of the beasts while they browsed saw the lion creep from the thick undergrowth, spring upon the camel and crush its skull with one blow of the paw. He screamed, and the lion walked off into the scrub in which it had been concealed. The other camels were terrified, and would certainly have bolted in a panic if they had not been hobbled. At night my friends heard hyenas running within a dozen yards of their beds.