commencing.--Here, my boy; put this flask
to your mouth. It's lucky I fetched it with us. Here, drink."

"No, not until you tell me what has occurred," said I, for I still felt
confused in my brain.

"Then I _won't_ tell you a word until you drink," repeated my friend, as
he looked anxiously in my face and held the flask to my lips.

I sipped a mouthful, and felt much revived.

"Now," continued Peterkin, "I'll tell you what has happened. We've
floored a rhinoceros and a giraffe and a lion, which, to my thinking, is
a pretty fair bag to make after dusk of a Saturday night! And my big
rifle has floored _you_, which is the least satisfactory part of the
night's entertainment, but which wouldn't have occurred had you
remembered my instructions, which you never do."

"Oh, I recollect now," said I, as the spirits revived me. "I'm all
right.--But, Jack, I trust that you have not received damage?"

"Not a scratch, I'm thankful to say; though I must confess I was near
catching an ugly wound."

"How so?" I inquired quickly, observing a peculiar smile on Jack's face
as he spoke.

"Oh, make your mind easy," put in Peterkin; "it was just a small bit of
an escape he made. When you let drive at the lion so effectively, one
of the balls went in at his mouth and smashed its way out at the back of
his skull. The other ball shaved his cheek, and lodged in a tree not
two inches from Jack's nose."

"You don't mean it!" cried I, starting up, regardless of the pain
occasioned to my injured shoulder by the movement, and gazing intently
in Jack's face.

"Come, come," said he, smiling; "you must not be so reckless, Ralph.
Lie down again, sir."

"Peterkin, you should not talk lightly of so narrow an escape," said I
reproachfully. "The fact that such a terrible catastrophe has nearly
occurred ought to solemnise one."

"Granted, my dear boy; but the fact that such a catastrophe did _not_
occur, ought, I hold, to make us jolly. There's no managing a fellow
like you, Ralph. I knew that if I told you of this gravely, you would
get into such a state of consternational self-reproachativeness, so to
speak, that you would infallibly make yourself worse. And now that I
tell it to you `lightly,' as you call it, you take to blowing me up."

I smiled as my friend said this, and held out my hand, which he grasped
and squeezed. Feeling at the moment overcome with drowsiness, I
unconsciously retained it in my grasp, and thus fell sou