ir
diurnal quest for food. The bees were already busy among the gorgeous
flowers; butterflies--more lovely even than the delicate blossoms above
which they poised themselves--flitted merrily about from bough to bough;
all nature, in fact, was rejoicing at the advent of a new day. And ill,
suffering though we were, we could not but in some measure take part in
the general joy, as with hearts overflowing with gratitude we remembered
that we had escaped the horrors of the previous night.

A glance or two about us and we scrambled to our feet, intent, in the
first instance, upon an immediate search for water. We had just settled
the question as to which direction seemed most promising for the
commencement of our quest when a clear musical call floated toward us,
and looking in the direction from whence it came, we beheld our black
Hebe approaching us, dragging a small dead antelope by the heels after
her. So she had not abandoned us after all; on the contrary, she had
probably spent a good part of the night arranging for the capture of the
creature which was to furnish us with a breakfast.

On joining us she held up her prize for our inspection, and then, with a
joyous laugh at our approving remarks--at the meaning of which she
could, of course, only make the roughest of guesses--she set to work
deftly to clear away and lay bare a space upon which to start a fire, in
which task, as soon as we saw what she wanted, we assisted her to the
best of our poor ability. This done, she went groping about beneath the
trees apparently in search of something; soon returning with two pieces
of dry stick, one of which, I noticed, had a hole in it. A quantity of
dry leaves and sticks was next collected, having arranged which to her
satisfaction, she knelt down, and inserting the pointed end of one stick
in the hole of the other, twirled it rapidly between the palms of her
hands, producing by the friction thus set up, first a slight wreath of
smoke, and ultimately a tiny flame, which was carefully communicated to
the dry leaves, and then gently fanned by her breath into a blaze. And
in this way a capital fire for cooking purposes was speedily obtained.

In the meantime Smellie and I had produced our knives and had undertaken
to skin and cut up the animal, some juicy steaks from which were soon
spluttering on pointed sticks before the fire. The cooking operations
being thus put in satisfactory progress, our little black friend
borr