twinkled in the firelight.

"The whoppers, sir."

"The whoppers!"

"Yes, sir; the crocs. I daresay if you went down by the river and
listened just at daybreak you would hear them at it, flapping the river
with their tails to stun the fish."

"But that wouldn't stun the fish," cried Dean. "Oh, come, I say, what a
traveller's tale!" And Mark laughed as if agreeing with his cousin.

"Well, it may be a traveller's tale, sir, but if you was there you'd see
the fish come to the top upside down, I mean, white side up'ards, and
the crocs shovelling them down as fast as you like. That's all I know
about it."

"But is that true, Buck?"

"Yes, sir; true enough, for I have seen it. I wouldn't tell you a tale
like that without letting you know it was a bam-bam afterwards."

"Ah, well, I'll believe you, Buck. Ugh! Listen! What's that? Did you
ever hear anything so horrible in your life! Somebody's being killed.
There it is again! There!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

"DON'T WAKE THE WRONG MAN."

"What are you laughing at, Buck?"

"You, sir," cried the man. "You'll get more used to our noises in
time."

"Then it's that horrible brute of a hyaena again. What a doleful howl!
Sounds just as if it was crying after its mother."

"But that isn't it, sir. He's howling after his supper."

A short time after Mark caught sight of the doctor approaching, grasped
the sign he gave him, sprang up, and went to the waggon for his rifle,
which he carefully loaded, and then began his solitary watch, which
seemed less wearisome on this occasion as he paraded to and fro and
round and round in the silence of the sleeping camp. Every now and then
he heard some startling sound, and ever and anon he listened to the
hyaena's wail, turning at times into what sounded like a mocking laugh.
Now and again too there was a cracked trumpet-like cry from the river,
but neither was this startling, as he had learned to know it as the call
of some night-hunting stork or crane.

Once or twice his finger went to the trigger of his piece involuntarily,
for it seemed to him that the loathsome animal that had hung about the
camp was creeping closer in search of food; but the fire just then
sprang up as the result of more fuel being thrown upon it, scaring away
the foul beast, for after a few words with the Hottentot and the
foreloper before they went back to their shelter beneath the leading
waggon, he heard the hyaena no more.

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