“What is this beautiful tawny skin, upon which I am sitting?”
“Lion's; she was the mother of one of the young lions out yonder. And this,” continued the trader, drawing something from the corner, “is her skull.” It gave a tender interest to the orphan outside, to see these remains of his mother. But sadness is misplaced on her account; it is better that she died, than to live to see her child in a menagerie.
“What's that thick stuff in a bottle there behind you?”
“That's lion's oil, some of her oil.” Unhappy family, the mother skinned and boiled, the offspring dragged into slavery.
I took the bottle. To think that I held in my hand the oil of a lion! Bear's oil is vulgar. But this is different; one might anoint himself for any heroic deed with this royal ointment.
“And is that another bottle of it?”
“Mais, no; you don't get a lion every day for oil; that is ostrich-oil. This is good for rheumatism.”
It ought to be. There is nothing rheumatic about the ostrich. When I have tasted sufficiently the barbaric joys of the cabin I climb out upon the deck to see more of this strange craft.
Upon the narrow and dirty bow, over a slow fire, on a shallow copper dish, a dark and slender boy is cooking flap-jacks as big as the flap of a leathern apron. He takes the flap-jack up by the edge in his fingers and turns it over, when one side is cooked, as easily as if it were a sheepskin. There is a pile of them beside him, enough to make a whole suit of clothes, burnous and all, and very durable it would prove. Near him is tied, by a cotton cord, a half-grown leopard, elegantly spotted, who has a habit of running out his tongue, giving a side-lick of his chops, and looking at you in the most friendly manner. If I were the boy I wouldn't stand with my naked back to a leopard which is tied with a slight string.
On shore, on the sand and in the edge of the wheat, are playing in the sun a couple of handsome young lions, gentle as kittens. After watching their antics for some time, and calculating the weight of their paws as they cuff each other, I satisfy a long ungratified Van Amburg ambition, by patting the youngest on the head and putting my hand (for an exceedingly brief instant) into his mouth, experiencing a certain fearful pleasure, remembering that although young he is a lion!