CHAPTER X
A SERIOUS CHECK
As I did so there was a scuffle and a yelp a few yards away, by a bush, and in the light that the fire shot suddenly around I distinctly caught sight of a brute which I believe was a hyena.
After this I lay with my revolver in my hand, determined that if any savage brute became bold enough again to venture within sight of me I would let fly at him, at the risk of frightening poor slumbering Jack out of his wits. Better that than to have a loathsome hyena or jackal come nibbling at one's leg while one lay asleep. A single shot would probably ensure quiet for the rest of the night.
Before my watch was over I did catch sight of another beast, or rather, I suppose, of the same one. I raised my revolver and pulled the trigger. The weapon misfired.
The "click" of the hammer was sufficient to scare my friend away for the time being; but it was not pleasant to think that our ammunition was not to be relied upon, and I determined to overhaul the stock in the morning. Meanwhile, I changed the cartridges in my revolver, for the little weapon had been loaded ever since leaving England, and it was possible that these were damp.
What if some brute had really attacked us, or—which was at least as likely—if the Strongs had crept up and fallen upon us, and our safety had depended upon this cartridge which had misfired? Ugh! I lay a while and reviled, in thought, revolver, gunner who made it, cartridge filler, and everyone remotely connected with the matter, including myself for neglecting to change the charge. Then I had a better thought, and offered up thanks for being saved twice this night from disaster: from the crocodile first, and afterwards from all kinds of unknown horrors lurking around us in the darkness.
After all, I reflected, whether we are at home in bed or in the midst of an African forest, we are in God's hands, to save or to kill. How pitifully helpless is every human being that lies and sleeps unconscious, and how entirely at the mercy of a Providence which one has probably angered times unreckoned! Misfortune might as easily assail us at home in bed as here in the veldt, if it were so willed! Disaster, after all, can no more befall me here than there unless the Almighty decrees it.
This reflection was of much comfort to me subsequently, throughout many a weird and creepy night—in hours of real danger, compared with which the mostly imagined perils of that first night out were as the merest child's play.
Jack was made of sterner stuff than I, and even the unseen perils of the darkness and of the ambush scarcely affected his nerves.