The beisa oryx is a large and beautiful desert antelope.
There were eight of them in the herd and with their sharp eyesight they were in flight before the Rolls had approached within three-quarters of a mile.
They ran lightly over the rough ground, their pale beige hides blending cunningly with the soft colours of the desert, but the long wicked black horns rode proudly as any battle standard.
The Rolls gained steadily on the running herd, with the Count hysterically urging his driver to greater speed, ignoring the thorn branches that scored the flawless sides of the big blue machine as it passed. Hunting was one of the Count's many pleasures. Boar and stag were specially bred on his estates, but this was the first large game he had encountered since his arrival in Africa. The herd was strung out, two old bulls leading, plunging ahead with a light rocking-horse gait, while the cows and two younger males trailed them.
The bouncing, roaring machine drew level with the last animal and ran alongside at a range of twenty yards. The galloping oryx did not turn its head but ran on doggedly after its stronger companions.
"Halt," shrieked the Count, and the driver stood on his brakes, the car broadsiding to rest in a billowing cloud of dust. The Count tumbled out of the open door and threw up the Mannlicher. The barrel kicked up and the shots crashed out. The first was a touch high and it threw a puff of dust off the earth far beyond the running animal the second slapped into the pale fur in front of the shoulder and the young oryx somersaulted over its broken neck and went down in a clumsy tangle of limbs.
"Onwards!" shouted the Count, leaping aboard the Rolls as it roared away once again. The herd was already far ahead but inexorably the Rolls closed the gap and at last drew level. Again the ringing crack of rifle-fire and the sliding, tumbling fall of a heavy pale body.
Like a paper chase, they left the wasteland littered with the pale bodies until only one old bull ran on alone. And he was cunning, swinging away westward into the broken ground for which he clearly headed at the outset of the chase.
It was hours and many miles later when the Count lost all patience. On the lip of another wadi he stopped the Rolls and ordered Gino, protesting volubly, to stand at attention and offer his shoulder as a dead-rest for the Marmlicher.
The beisa had slowed now to an exhausted trot, but the range was six hundred yards as the Count sighted across the intervening scrub and through heat-dancing air that swirled like gelatinous liquid.
The rifle-fire cracked the desert silences and the antelope kept trotting steadily away, while the Count shrieked abuse at it and crammed a fresh load of brass cartridges into the magazine.
The animal was almost beyond effective range now, but the next bullet fired with the rear sight at maximum elevation fell in a long arcing trajectory and they heard the thump of the strike, long after the beisa had collapsed abruptly and disappeared below the line of grey scrub.
When they had found another crossing and forced the
, Rolls through the deep ravine, scraping the rear fender and denting one of the big silver wheel-hubs, they came up to the spot where the antelope lay on its side. Leaving the rifle on the back seat in his eagerness, the Count leapt out before the Rolls had stopped completely.
-Get one of me completing the coup de grace," he shouted at Gino, as he unholstered the ivory-handled Beretta and ran to the downed animal.
The soft bullet had shattered the spinal column a few inches forward of the pelvis, paralysing the hindquarters, and the blood pumped gently from the wound in a bright rivulet down the pale beige flank.
The Count posed dramatically, pointing the pistol at the magnificently horned head with its elaborate face-mask of dark chocolate stripes.
Near by, Gino knelt in the soft earth focusing the camera.
At the critical moment, the antelope heaved itself up into a sitting position and stared with swimming agonized eyes into the Count's face. The beisa is one of the most aggressive antelopes in Africa, capable of killing even a fully grown lion with its long rapier horns. This old bull weighed 450 lb. and stood four feet high at the shoulder while the horns rose another three feet above that.
The beisa snorted, and the Count forgot all about the levelled pistol in his hand in his sudden desperate desire to reach the safety of the Rolls.
Leading the beisa by six inches, he vaulted lightly into the back seat and crouched on the floorboards, covering his head with both arms while the beisa battered the sides of the Rolls, driving in one door and ripping the paintwork with the deadly horns.
Gino was trying to disappear into the earth by sheer pressure, and he was making a pitiful wailing sound. The driver had stalled the engine, and he sat frozen in his seat and every time the beisa crashed into the Rolls, he was thrown so violently forward that his forehead struck the windshield, and he pleaded, "Shoot it, my Count. Please, my Count, shoot the monster." The Count's posterior was pointed to the sky. It was the only part of his anatomy that was visible above the rear seat of the Rolls and he was shrieking for somebody to hand him the rifle, but not raising his head to search for it.
The bullet that had severed the beisa's spine had angled forward and pierced the lung as well. The violent exertions of the stricken animal tore open a large artery and, with a pitiful bellow and a sudden double spurt of blood through the nostrils, it collapsed.
In the long silence that followed, the Count's pale face rose slowly above the level of the back door and he stared fearfully at the carcass. Its stillness reassured him. Cautiously, he groped for the Marinlicher, lifted it slowly and poured a stream of bullets into the inert beisa. His hands were shaking so violently that some of the shots missed the body and came perilously close to where Gino still lay, producing a fresh outburst of wails and more mole-like efforts to become subterranean.
Satisfied that the beisa was at last dead, the Count descended and walked slowly towards a nearby clump of thorn scrub, but his gait was bow-legged and stiff, for he had lightly soiled his magnificently monogrammed silk underwear.
In the cool of the evening, the slightly crumpled Rolls returned to the battalion bivouac. Draped over the bonnet and across the wide mudguards lay the bleeding carcasses of the antelopes. The Count stood to acknowledge the cheers of his troops, a veritable triumphant Nimrod.
A radio message from General De Bono awaited him. It was not a reprimand, the General would not go that far, but it pointed out that although the General was grateful for the Count's efforts up to the present time, and for his fine sentiments and loyal messages, nevertheless the General would be very grateful if the Count could find some way in which to speed up his advance.
The Count sent him a five-hundred-word reply ending, "Ours is the Victory," and then went to feast on barbecued antelope livers and iced chianti with his officers.
Leaving the sailing and handling of the HirondeUe to his Mohammedan mate and his raggedy crew, Captain Papadopoulos had spent the preceding five days sitting at the table in his low-roofed poop cabin playing two-handed gin rummy with Major Gareth Swales. Gareth had suggested the diversion and it had occurred to the Captain by this time that there was something unnatural in the consistent run of winning cards which had distinguished Gareth's play.
The agreed fare for transporting the cars and the four passengers had totalled two hundred and fifty of sterling.
The Captain's losses had just exceeded that figure, and Gareth smiled winningly at Papadopoulos and smoothed the golden moustaches.