"Let the young lions sleep," he said. "We can have no better watch than we now have. See! the jackal smelt you while you were still afar, and the chiefs wife heard the noise of the boat before I did. Wow! We are safe while they watch."
"Does the chiefs wife smoke?" "Ow ay! tobacco would please her heart." Mr. Hume passed a pipe and tobacco to the woman, and Compton gave her a lighted match. She took them as if they were ordinary objects of her life, lit the pipe, and by the flame of the match leant forward to peer into the boy's face as she had stared at Mr. Hume. And she spoke a word or two before turning her face to the bows for the long watch.
"The river runs into the sea; but the river is always full. That is her word, young lion."
"Which means?"
"I told her you were the white man's son, and she has seen for herself. Maybe her words mean that when the father is gone the son takes his place. But in time you will know, for her meaning is sometimes hard to understand. Now sleep, you two, for there is great need for us ahead."
Without more ado the two "young lions" rolled themselves in their blankets and enjoyed the rare luxury of an untroubled sleep, and when they awoke they were in a vast lagoon, out of which stood the bleached skeletons of dead trees, with gaunt bare branches, in all manner of fantastic shapes. But it was only the trees that were dead, for the astonished eyes of the boys rested on such a multiplicity of animal life as they had never before seen. Birds roosted on the aforesaid dead branches—sooty ibis, white pelicans, crows, kingfishers, and here and there, like sentinels on the topmost branches, a white-headed eagle, with his hooked bill, dominating the scene. Wheeling through the air were strings of duck and wisps of snipe in battalions, rows of cranes with their long legs trailing, and on the surface of the smooth water, on scores of small islands, formed originally by uprooted trees, and under the water, there were yet innumerable creatures. It was certainly grand hunting for all. There were flies and gnats for the frogs, tadpoles and the spawn of frogs for the little fishes, little fishes were preyed on by the ducks and the big fishes, while the birds and the big fishes in turn provided breakfast, dinner, and supper for the crocodiles. Apparently the crocodiles were too tough, too musky, and too powerful, to serve as food for any other animal higher up in the scale; but it is not to be supposed that they had merely to open their jaws to snatch a meal, for there were shallows all about where the waders could go to sleep in peace, standing on one leg. And there they stood, regiments of them—crested cranes, blue cranes, black ibis, pink ibis, flamingoes, and wild geese.. And the noise was tremendous!
The Okapi sailed under a gentle breeze right into the thick of this sportsman's paradise, and from the low islands armies of mosquitoes gaily advanced to meet her until they formed a moving cloud around her, only kept off from eating up the crew by the merciful intervention of the canvas awning and mosquito curtains.
"What a magnificent specimen of the spoonbill bittern," groaned Venning. "If we had only brought an air-gun—for I suppose we cannot fire."
"Look at those fat geese in a row," said Compton. "What a stew they would make. Just one shot, sir."
"It won't do," said Mr. Hume. "A single shot would raise noise enough to wake the seven sleepers."