Now all animals are quite as suspicious of
this end of mankind as they are of his face, and of that fact I soon had
a proof. Just when we had got within about two hundred yards, and I was
congratulating myself that I had not had this long crawl with the sun
beating on the back of my neck like a furnace for nothing, I heard the
hissing note of the rhinoceros birds, and up flew four or five of them
from the brute's back, where they had been comfortably employed in
catching tics. Now this performance on the part of the birds is to a
rhinoceros what the word 'cave' is to a schoolboy--it puts him on the
_qui vive_ at once. Before the birds were well in the air I saw the
grass stir.
"'Down you go,' I whispered to the boys, and as I did so the rhinoceros
got up and glared suspiciously around. But he could see nothing, indeed
if we had been standing up I doubt if he would have seen us at that
distance; so he merely gave two or three sniffs and then lay down, his
head still down wind, the birds once more settling on his back.
"But it was clear to me that he was sleeping with one eye open, being
generally in a suspicious and unchristian frame of mind, and that it
was useless to proceed further on this stalk, so we quietly withdrew
to consider the position and study the ground. The results were not
satisfactory. There was absolutely no cover about except the ant-heap,
which was some three hundred yards from the rhinoceros upon his up-wind
side.
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