A STRANGE ALLIANCE.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2648, 17 November 1919, Page 7

A STRANGE ALLIANCE.

OF AN OLD GNU THAT WAS DRIVEN FROM ITS HERD AND FOUND NEW FRIENDS. There was some trouble out in the glare of the sun on the bare plain, and the dust was rising in clouds. A single vulture hung over the scene, as if expecting profit from the inspection, and a little black-backed jackal, prick-eared and dog-like, was watching attentively from an unsuspected hole under a wait-a-bit thorn. Presently forms began to loom up among the dust as the cloud itself began to move. Beasts, extraordinarily strange and odd beasts, with shaggy heads and curved horns, like buffaloes, long, horse-like tails, and sturdy but graceful, somewhat ante-lope-like bodies, began to loom up indistinctly. One heavy, massive, very shaggy beast was fighting with the rest. But always the heavy, shaggy fellow, whose very massiveness spelt age, gave back slowly on the whole, though often master in the single contests. He could not fight the whole herd, and that, in fact, was what he was being asked to do then, la other words, a pio.ee of wild justice was taking place, which is to say that, because of his "crustiness" jealousy, lack of chivalry. ° r for some other, or all these reasons, that old shaggy brute was being kicked out of the herd.

.As they drew nearer, one saw that they were blue gnus, which are brindled gnus, which are bearded gnus, which are wild beasts, and devilish wild beasts, too. If you did not know they were antelope, you would have said they were buffalo, musk ox, horse, and antelope mixed into one beast. The result, anyway, was a queer customer. At last the old bull gnu—perhaps he had been lord of the herd till then—acknowledged defeat, and, realising that he could not do the impossible, cleared himself cleverly from a terrihle mix-up among three other bulls, and set off at a gallop alone.

Then at length he remembered that it was sundown, and time for all good wild beasts to take the evening drink, and he walked to one of those well-worn paths which all his kind make towards water, and slowly plodded his heavy way to the river.

It was not a. great distance, in and out among the shattered clumps of thorny acacias, and he was not alone, for as he drew near the river he met v many herds of antelopes and of zebra, going to or coming from the water.

Coming up to the bank behind a herd of gaudy zebra, he was the rirst to sight, over a ridge not far off, the two great, tawny, heavy, giantdog forms, seen and gone in an instant, dead ahead. They were lions, and his instant loud, warning snorts said so, and drew the zebras' attention to the danger, so that they broke away, and stampeded thunderously in the opposite direction. And again it was he, galloping clumsily with them, who shied suddenly at a clump of acacias, and began zigzagging and swerving wildly in and out at top speed, snorting madly, so that the zebras scattered, and the lioness that had been told off from her companions to lie in wait for the stampeded herds, could only come out and growl her disappointment at them.

That night he kept with the zebras feeding with them wherever they went, and they did not drive him off. Perhaps they realised that as a sentry he was an asset. And next day an old wart-hog, as ngly as sin, came and struck up acquaintance with him, and later a cock ostrich—all, perhaps, old bad-tempered outcasts.

Anyway, when the day dawned they were still together, and the zebra had gone, and, for all I know, they are together to this day, surely as strange an alliance as ever faced the battle of life—bird, pig, and antelope—old bachelors all.