As the burning sun revolved towards the West, the lengthening shadows of the wood went round in the reverse direction, until the level sunbeams cast them far across the arid desert I had traversed so swiftly yesterday; and as the light of evening sank, the hues of that white glistening waste changed to yellow, then to brown, and then to amber.
My arms ached till they seemed in process of being rent from my shoulders: so, panting, hot, breathless, and half dead with thirst, I reclined against that abhorred tree, from which I could in no way free myself.
As evening deepened, the hum of insect life lessened, and the bright-plumed birds of the wilderness were seeking their nests in the foliage above me; but on me their beauty was lost. Even the cock of the Libyan forest, with his purple breast, his crimson and green pinions, was unheeded, as he picked up a few grains of millet at my feet, and passed to his mate in the orange tree.
A raven or two, soaring through the blue immensity of the sky, suggested dreadful thoughts of what I might be on the morrow.
Then little snakes came from amid the long grass to writhe and wriggle on the sand, which was yet warm with the sunshine of the past day; and they made me think of the dreadful cobra-capello, with his flamelike tongue, charged with poison and death—the hooded serpent, which, when in fury, has been known to rear its horrid front, and spring at a man on horseback; and then of the berg-adder, which I feared still more, because it is so difficult to discover, and which I had no means of avoiding if it approached me.
My past reading had given me, moreover, a somewhat exaggerated idea of the number of wild animals in Africa. At Ascension, I had seen a narrative of a Voyage à l'Isle de France, by a person who styled himself an Officier du Roi, and who stated that, in the forests of Africa, "there were to be found whole armies of lions."
Later travellers have ridiculed this idea, but be that as it may, the distant roaring of a lion now added to the accumulating dangers which surrounded me, and filled my soul with emotions of horror so great that I could not summon even a thought of prayer, and memory refused to supply me with the most hackneyed ejaculation of piety.
Bound and helpless, without means of defence or flight, I now heard this terrible animal approaching me, crushing the shrubs and branches in his native forest as he came.
On hearing this sound, so fraught with danger, a zebra and several antelopes bounded out of the wood and paused to listen. Again that prolonged cry rang upon the still air. The zebra cowered and shuddered, and after crouching for a moment, sprang away into the desert of sand, followed by the fleet little antelopes (which were of the kind called Guinea Deer, having legs no thicker than a tobacco-pipe), and they were all soon out of sight.
The roar was singular in sound. Hoarse and inarticulate, it swelled upon the air like a prolonged O, that seemed to come from and pass to a vast distance. It never became loud or shrill, but the idea it suggested of the animal itself, made it seem to pierce the very soul; and all the tales I had read or heard of the lion, and all the terrors I had conjured up as being embodied in his tremendous person, came upon me like a flood.