“I am ready,” said Mark, rather bumptiously; “but I am disappointed, all the same.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, “no doubt you are; but you must curb your impatience till we reach the part of the country where the lions are. I thought you were going to have your nap.”
“No,” said Mark; “Dean and I are going to have a chat with the men. Dance says he wouldn’t have believed there could have been so many ‘come backs’ in all the world—I say, what’s that?” he cried. “That wasn’t a lion?”
“No,” said the doctor, for a long, low, dismal and penetrating howl had gone out upon the night.
“What is it, then? There it goes again.”
“I form my own idea of what it is,” said the doctor. “You two can go and tell the men to throw some more wood on the fire.”
He had hardly spoken when the low and doleful howl rang out again from the distance, and the fire blazed up under the influence of an armful of dead boughs which the Hottentot and the black foreloper had just thrown on, the clear, bright flame showing out the big, heavy figure of Buck Denham and lighting up his face as he turned round to tell the men to bring up more wood for the night supply.
The boys sprang up from where they were seated, and hurried round to the other side of the blazing heap where their men had gathered together to sit and have their evening smoke.
“Hear that howling?” cried Mark. “You, Pete—Bob—”
“Yes, sir; we couldn’t help it,” said the latter. “I was asking Buck Denham what it was, thinking it was one of them great tom cats; but he says it’s only a hy-he—something.”