One never knows what to expect.

A suspicious stir in the reeds may mean a lion or only a hyena; an enormous crashing may sound like a herd of elephants, but finally resolve itself into a badly frightened reedbuck.
Most of the time you expect reedbuck, but all the time you have to be ready for lion.

As a general thing a lion will slink along in the reeds ahead of the beaters and not reveal himself until he is driven to the end of the cover.

Then he will grunt warningly or show an ear or a lashing tail above the reeds, and instantly every one is in a state of intense expectancy.

What the next move will be no one knows, but it is more than likely to be something of a supremely dramatic sort.
One day we were beating swamps on the Guas Ngishu Plateau.