Oscar was recalled to himself by the actions of the Kaffir, who, having mended his own fire, had taken up a blazing brand in each hand, and started out to replenish the others. He was so cool, and went about his work so deliberately, that Oscar regained his courage while he looked at him.
Taking his rifle with him, so as to be ready for any emergency, Oscar hastened to the Kaffir's assistance; and in a few minutes more all the fires were burning brightly.
When he returned to the wagon the fight was over, the lions had ceased their roaring, and everything was quiet.
"I'll just tell you what's a fact," soliloquized Oscar as he seated himself on the fore-chest and laid his rifle across his knees. "Hearing a lion roar in a menagerie, when he is safe behind iron bars, and hearing a dozen or more of them give tongue here in the wilds of Africa, where there is literally nothing to protect you from their fury if they take a notion to pitch into you, are two widely different things. I never want to listen to another concert like that as long as I live. I have no ear for such music."
He took off his cap and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. The exciting ordeal through which he had passed had brought the perspiration out all over him.
CHAPTER XXII. WHAT McCANN DID.
There was little sleeping done in the camp that night. McCann kept his place behind the fore-chest, the Hottentots never showed themselves or made their whereabouts known, and the young hunter and his Kaffir interpreter stood guard, kept the fires blazing, and listened to the noise made by the animals that were constantly going to and from the fountain. There seemed to be no end to them.
If there were any faith to be placed in one's sense of hearing, Oscar had seen but a very small portion of the game that inhabited that section of the country. Sometimes the noise made by their hoofs continued for ten minutes at a time without the least interruption.