“What is it—lions?” he panted.
“Yes,” whispered West, whose fingers were busy re-loading, and he listened for the next sound, but only to hear a deep sighing breath on either side, telling that the horses had been too much terrified to start away, or else felt that they would be safer with their masters, and that to try to gallop off meant the springing of a savage enemy upon their backs.
The silence continued for nearly a minute, and then there was a vicious snarling, apparently some fifty yards away, while without a moment’s hesitation Ingleborough raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired as nearly as he could judge at the spot from whence the noise came. He fired twice, the shots being so close together as almost to be like one for a while. Then after a perceptible interval they were echoed from the walls of a distant kopje, and again from another, before they died away.
“That has startled the lions,” said Ingleborough; “but I’m afraid it will startle the Boers and bring them to see what’s the matter.”
“Yes, the lions are gone,” said West. “Hark at that! Who says horses have no sense?”
For the crop, crop, crop of the browsing animals had begun again from close at hand, and the comrades stood listening for some little time while the otherwise unbroken stillness once more reigned.
“What’s to be done?” said West. “Shall we make a start at once, or wait for daylight?”
“I was thinking,” replied Ingleborough. “If we start now we have the advantage of the darkness to hide us, but the disadvantage too, for we may go blundering right into the midst of some commando. I don’t think the firing could do us any harm, after all, for the enemy would not be able to tell where the sounds came from. I think we had better stay where we are and wait for morning.”
“I think so too,” said West, with a sigh of relief; “but one of us ought to watch in case the lions come back.”
“They will not come back!” said Ingleborough decisively. “From what I know of their habits they’ll have been too much scared to risk their lives again. You hit one of them; there’s no doubt about that.”