ars; and like the stars watch over you.'

"Although I was so weak, I could not at once follow his advice. To begin
with, my head ached with fever, and I was torn with anxiety as to the
fate of the Hottentot Hans; and, indeed, as to our own fate, left
with sore feet, empty stomachs, and two cartridges, to find our way to
Bamangwato, forty miles off. Then the mere sensation of knowing that
there are one or more hungry lions prowling round you somewhere in the
dark is disquieting, however well one may be used to it, and, by keeping
the attention on the stretch, tends to prevent one from sleeping. In
addition to all these troubles, too, I was, I remember, seized with
a dreadful longing for a pipe of tobacco, whereas, under the
circumstances, I might as well have longed for the moon.

"At last, however, I fell into an uneasy sleep as full of bad dreams as
a prickly pear is of points, one of which, I recollect, was that I was
setting my naked foot upon a cobra which rose upon its tail and hissed
my name, 'Macumazahn,' into my ear. Indeed, the cobra hissed with such
persistency that at last I roused myself.

"'_Macumazahn, nanzia, nanzia!_' (there, there!) whispered Mashune's
voice into my drowsy ears. Raising myself, I opened my eyes, and I saw
Mashune kneeling by my side and pointing towards the water. Following
the line of his outstretched hand, my eyes fell upon a sight that made
me jump, old hunter as I was even in those days. About twenty paces
from the little skerm was a large ant-heap, and on the summit of the
ant-heap, her four feet rather close together, so as to find standing
space, stood the massive form of a big lioness. Her head was towards the
skerm, and in the bright moonlight I saw her lower it and lick her paws.

"Mashune thrust the Martini rifle into my hands, whispering that it was
loaded. I lifted it and covered the lioness, but found that even in that
light I could not make out the foresight of the Martini. As it would be
madness to fire without doing so, for the result would probably be that
I should wound the lioness, if, indeed, I did not miss her altogether, I
lowered the rifle; and, hastily tearing a fragment of paper from one of
the leaves of my pocket-book, which I had been consulting just before I
went to sleep, I proceeded to fix it on to the front sight. But all this
took a little time, and before the paper was satisfactorily arranged,
Mashune again gripped me by the arm, and pointed to a dark