“The cob was standing quite still when I came up, and looked half asleep himself.”
“Poor old Breezy! He had such a fright too. I thought I should never catch up to him. But I did.”
“Can you forgive me, old fellow?”
“Can I what? Oh, I say, Joe! Don’t say any more, please. Here, give me some cartridges to put in my pocket. I’m all right now, and there are sure to be some more lions there. But, I say, I don’t think I should like to shoot at that first one.”
Emson handed a dozen cartridges, and then shouted to Jack to stop, which the Kaffir and his two dumb companions willingly did.
“What are you going to do, Joe?”
“Discretion is the better part of valour,” said Emson quietly. “It would be dark by the time we got there, and on your own showing, the field is in possession of the enemy. Why, Dyke, old fellow, it would be about as mad a thing as we could do to drive a couple of bullocks up to where perhaps half-a-dozen lions are feasting. I ought to have known better, but it did not occur to me. These brutes must have been following the herds. There’s only one thing to do.”
“What’s that? Go near and fire to scare them away?”
“To come back again, after they had left us the mangled remains of the eland. No good, Dyke: we shall be safer in our own beds. It’s only another failure, old chap. Never mind: we may get game to-morrow.”
Dyke tried to oppose this plan of giving up, but it was only in a half-hearted way, and they rode back slowly towards Kopfontein, pausing from time to time for the oxen to catch up, Jack growing more and more uneasy as the night came on, and running after them and leaving the oxen, if they came to be any distance ahead.