The foremost of the quaggas might be caught, but the others would not be fools enough to walk into the pit--after their leader had fallen in and laid the trap open.

They of course would gallop off, and never come back that way again.
If it could be done at night, Hendrik admitted, the thing might be different.

In the darkness several might rush in before catching the alarm.

But no--the quaggas had always come to drink in day-time--one only could be trapped, and then the others alarmed would keep away.
There would have been reason in what Hendrik said, but for a remarkable fact which the field-cornet himself had observed when the quaggas came to the lake to drink.

It was, that the animals had invariably entered the water at one point, and gone out at another.