fifty miles north of the oasis,
and, crossing the intervening desert, killed many of the Zeu sheep,
camels, and other cattle, and often enough any of the tribe whom they
could catch. As these poor Zeus practically possessed no firearms, they
were at the mercy of the lions, which grew correspondingly bold. Indeed,
their only resource was to kraal their animals within stone walls at
night and take refuge in their huts, which they seldom left between
sunset and dawn, except to replenish the fires that they lit to scare
any beast of prey which might be prowling through the town.

Though the lion season was now in full swing, as it happened, for the
first five days of our stay at Zeu we saw none of these great cats,
although in the darkness we heard them roaring in the distance. On the
sixth night, however, we were awakened by a sound of wailing, which came
from the village about a quarter of a mile away, and when we went out
at dawn to see what was the matter, were met by a melancholy procession
advancing from its walls. At the head of it marched the grey-haired old
chief, followed by a number of screaming women, who in their excitement,
or perhaps as a sign of mourning, had omitted to make their toilette,
and by four men, who carried something horrid on a wickerwork door.

Soon we learned what had happened. It seemed that hungry lions, two or
three of them, had broken through the palm-leaf roof of the hut of one
of the sheik's wives, she whose remains were stretched upon the door,
and, in addition to killing her, had actually carried off his son.
Now he came to implore us white men who had guns to revenge him on the
lions, which otherwise, having once tasted human flesh, would destroy
many more of his people.

Through an interpreter who knew Arabic, for not even Higgs could
understand the peculiar Zeu dialect, he explained in excited and
incoherent words that the beasts lay up among the sand-hills not very
far away, where some thick reeds grew around a little spring of water.
Would we not come out and kill them and earn the blessing of the Zeus?

Now I said nothing, for the simple reason that, having such big matters
on hand, although I was always fond of sport, I did not wish any of us
to be led off after these lions. There is a time to hunt and a time
to cease from hunting, and it seemed to me, except for the purposes of
food, that this journey of ours was the latter. However, as I expected,
Oliver Orme literally lea