and have their evening smoke.

"Hear that howling?" cried Mark. "You, Pete--Bob--"

"Yes, sir; we couldn't help it," said the latter. "I was asking Buck
Denham what it was, thinking it was one of them great tom cats; but he
says it's only a hy-he--something."

"Hyhaena, my lad--hyhaena."

"Yes, that's it. Well, it made noise enough for t'other, didn't it?"

"Made noise enough for t'other!" growled the driver. "You wait till you
hear the real thing, and you won't ask questions again like that."

Dance took his pipe out of his mouth and opened his eyes, for he too had
grown drowsy in the warmth of the fire, after his long day's tramp.

"I 'eerd it too, and thought it must be a big howl a-howling. You have
got howls out here, haven't you, mate?"

"Oh, yes; plenty. But that's what I said."

The big driver having noted that the men had brought up a plentiful
supply of wood sufficient to keep up the beast-scaring beacon, subsided
heavily in the full light of the fire and began to fill his pipe.

"Now you two," he said to the Hottentot and the foreloper, "just take a
quiet walk round the bullocks, and then you can come back and smoke your
pipe of peace."

The Hottentot's voice sounded very unpleasant and very clicky as he
replied sharply, and though it was almost unintelligible Mark made out
from it and the driver's answers that Dunn Brown was already performing
that duty.

"Oh," said Buck, "then you needn't go. That will be all right. Well,
Illaka, aren't you coming to sit down?" For the boys suddenly noticed
the black shadowy figure of the guide glide into the firelight, his
appearance being emphasised by a flash where the flame played upon the
polished leaf-shaped blade of his spear.

The man nodded, shook his head, and disappeared again.

"What sort of fish do you think there are out in the river here?" asked
Bob Bacon.

"I don't know their names," said Buck Denham quietly, as he went on
filling his pipe very slowly; and the two boys sat down one on either
side, pricking up their ears at the words "river" and "fish."

The big driver leaned forward, drew out an incandescent piece of wood
and quite ceremoniously held it to the bowl of his pipe.

"I don't think you will find any trout," he said, "like you have at
home, but there's plenty of fish there, I should say, just as there is
lower down near Illakaree, and up here I should reckon there's plenty to
fish for."

"Ah!" cried Mark eagerly, as