ave it
attended to. The obvious treatment was very hot water and rest; but it
would never do to tell him so. The recommendation of so simple a remedy
would lose me his faith. So I gave him a little dab of tick ointment
wrapped in a leaf.

"This," said I, "is most wonderful medicine; but it is also most
dangerous. If you were to rub it on your foot or your hand or any part
of you, that part would drop off. But if you wash the part in very hot
water continuously for a half hour, and then put on the medicine, it is
good, and will cure you very soon." I am sure I do not know what they
put in tick ointment; nor, for the purpose, did it greatly matter. That
night, also, Herbert Spencer reached the climax of his absurdities. The
chops he had cooked did not quite suffice for our hunger, so we
instructed him to give us some of the leg. By this we meant steak, of
course. Herbert Spencer was gone so long a time that finally we went to
see what possibly could be the matter. We found him trying desperately
to cook the whole leg in a frying-pan!

XXII.

THE SECOND LIONESS.

Now our luck changed most abruptly. We had been riding since early
morning over the wide plains. By and by we came to a wide, shallow,
flood-water course carpeted with lava boulders and scant, scattered
brush. Two of us took one side of it, and two the other. At this we were
just within hailing distance. The boys wandered down the middle.

Game was here very abundant, and in this broken country proved quite
approachable. I saw one Grant's gazelle head, in especial, that greatly
tempted me; but we were hunting lions, and other shooting was out of
place. Also the prospects for lions had brightened, for we were
continually seeing hyenas in packs of from three to six. They lay among
the stones, but galloped away at our approach. The game paid not the
slightest attention to these huge, skulking brutes. One passed within
twenty feet of a hartebeeste; the latter hardly glanced at him. As the
hyena is lazy as well as cowardly, and almost never does his killing, we
inferred a good meat supply to gather so many of them in one place. From
a tributary ravine we flushed nineteen!

Harold Hill was riding with me on the right bank. His quick eye caught a
glimpse of something beyond our companions on the left side. A glance
through the glasses showed me that it was a lion, just disappearing over
the hill. At once we turned our horses to cross. It was a heavy job. W