ch the silence brooded. There beneath us a mile or more to
the right ran the wide Oliphant, and mirror-like flashed back the moon,
whose silver spears were shivered on its breast, and then tossed in
twisted lines of light far and wide about the mountains and the plain.
Down upon the river-banks grew great timber-trees that through the
stillness pointed solemnly to Heaven, and the beauty of the night lay
upon them like a cloud. Everywhere was silence--silence in the starred
depths, silence on the bosom of the sleeping earth. Now, if ever, great
thoughts might rise in a man's mind, and for a space he might forget his
littleness in the sense that he partook of the pure immensity about him.

"'Hark! what was that?'

"From far away down by the river there comes a mighty rolling sound,
then another, and another. It is the lion seeking his meat.

"I saw Harry shiver and turn a little pale. He was a plucky boy enough,
but the roar of a lion heard for the first time in the solemn bush veldt
at night is apt to shake the nerves of any lad.

"'Lions, my boy,' I said; 'they are hunting down by the river there;
but I don't think that you need make yourself uneasy. We have been here
three nights now, and if they were going to pay us a visit I think that
they would have done so before this. However, we will make up the fire.'

"'Here, Pharaoh, do you and Jim-Jim get some more wood before we go to
sleep, else the cats will be purring round you before morning.'

"Pharaoh, a great brawny Swazi, who had been working for me at Pilgrims'
Rest, laughed, rose, and stretched himself, then calling to Jim-Jim to
bring the axe and a reim, started off in the moonlight towards a clump
of sugar-bush where we cut our fuel from some dead trees. He was a
fine fellow in his way, was Pharaoh, and I think that he had been named
Pharaoh because he had an Egyptian cast of countenance and a royal
sort of swagger about him. But his way was a somewhat peculiar way, on
account of the uncertainty of his temper, and very few people could get
on with him; also if he could find liquor he would drink like a fish,
and when he drank he became shockingly bloodthirsty. These were his bad
points; his good ones were that, like most people of the Zulu blood,
he became exceedingly attached if he took to you at all; he was a
hard-working and intelligent man, and about as dare-devil and plucky
a fellow at a pinch as I have ever had to do with. He was about
five-and-thirty