Save for the laugh of an occasional hyena and now and again for a sound which I took for the coughing of a distant lion, there was no stir between sleeping earth and moonlit heaven in which little clouds floated beneath the pale stars.
At length I thought that I heard a noise, a kind of murmur far away.

It grew, it developed.
It sounded like a thousand sticks tapping upon something hard, very faintly.

It continued to grow, and I knew the sound for that of the beating hoofs of animals galloping.

Then there were isolated noises, very faint and thin; they might be shouts; then something that I could not mistake--shots fired at a distance.

So the business was afoot; the cattle were moving, Saduko and my hunter were firing.