oness, and rode for my life. In the open I held my own easily, but
once entangled in the bush, was forced to leave my horse, and had barely
time to climb a tree, losing everything save my rifle. The lioness
pulled down my horse in a moment, and her cubs soon joined her. My
rifle was a single one, while all my powder and ball were left in my
holsters. I tried the cry used in the Australian bush, reserving my
fire until the last moment. The rest you know."

"But what about Mozelkatse? On your own showing, it is useless to
proceed unless you have his protection," asked Hughes.

"He is to be back in seven days, having left his kraal, on a grand
hunting expedition, at the foot of yonder mountains, and he sent me a
messenger saying he would be glad to meet me," replied the missionary.

"Then there are seven days for me to get rid of the marks of that
confounded lioness. Good-night, Wyzinski; it is getting late, and my
day has been rather an exciting one."

Volume 1, Chapter IV.

MOZELKATSE.

Thanks to a vigorous constitution and to temperate habits, wounds which
might have been troublesome under a warm climate soon closed, and though
for days the torn shoulder gave a good deal of pain, yet it rapidly
healed. Game was plentiful, and the koodoos easily approached, so that
Luji and the Kaffir Noti kept the camp provisioned during the week the
tent remained pitched on the banks of the Limpolulo until a runner from
Mozelkatse arrived, summoning the travellers to meet him at
Zoutpansburgh, then a native kraal of some importance, about twenty
miles to the northward and westward, on a spur of the Drakenburgh range.
The life was a pleasant one. The breakfast round the remains of the
camp fire. The loud shouts of the men as they chased and harnessed the
lazy oxen. The cracking of the long whip as the lumbering waggon moved
off. The mount and the gallop over the plain, with herds of deer flying
before the hunters. The dinner under some spreading tree, the house on
wheels, oxen and men around it. The tales told round the blaze, as the
difficulties of the day were discussed, and those of the morrow
canvassed; and then the sound sleep so well earned by fatigue. The
evening of the seventh day after the affair with the lioness, the party
outspanned at the foot of the mountain range, close to the native kraal
Zoutpansburgh, the morrow being fixed by Mozelkatse for the audience.

The morning came, bright, warm, and glorio