.

"Yes, sir."

"It was a very tremendous yell, wasn't it, Dally?" asked John Skyd
slily, as the waiter-cook was turning to resume his duties at the fire.

"Wery, sir."

"And alarmed us all dreadfully, didn't it?"

"Oh! dreadfully, sir--'specially me; though I must in dooty say that you
four gentleman was as bold as brass. It quite relieved me when I saw
your tall figurs standin' at the mouth o' your cavern, an' the muzzles
o' your four double-guns--that's eight shots--with your glaring eyes an'
pale cheeks behind them!"

"Ha!" exclaimed John Skyd, with a grim smile--"but after all it might
only have been the shriek of a baboon."

"I think not, sir," replied George, with a smile of intelligence.

"Perhaps then it was the cry of a zebra or quagga," returned John Skyd,
"or a South African ass of some sort."

"Wery likely, sir," retorted George. "I shouldn't wonder if it was--
which is wery consolin' to my feelin's, for I'd sooner be terrified out
o' my wits by asses of any kind than fall in with these long-legged
savages that dwell in caves."

With an appearance of great humility George returned to his work at the
fire.

It was either owing to a sort of righteous retribution, or a touch of
that fortune which favours the brave, that George Dally was in reality
the first, of this particular party of settlers, to encounter the black
and naked inhabitant of South Africa in his native jungle. It was on
this wise.

George was fond of sport, when not detained at home by the claims of
duty. But these claims were so constant that he found it impossible to
indulge his taste, save, as he was wont to say, "in the early morn and
late at eve."

One morning about daybreak, shouldering his gun and buckling on his
hunting-knife, he marched into the jungle in quest of an antelope.
Experience had taught him that the best plan was to seat himself at a
certain opening or pass which lay on the route to a pool of water, and
there bide his time.

Seating himself on a moss-covered stone, he put his gun in position on
his knee, with the forefinger on the trigger, and remained for some time
so motionless that a North American Indian might have envied his powers
of self-restraint. Suddenly a twig was heard to snap in the thicket
before him. Next moment the striped black and yellow skin of a leopard,
or Cape tiger, appeared in the opening where he had expected to behold a
deer. Dally's gun flew to his shoulder. At the same