`Certainly, Jack,' I said, `I am quite ready to listen to you. First and foremostly, how did you bring down those beautiful little animals you have there?'
`Oh, we galloped them down. The dogs sniffed about in the grass while Fritz was away after the rabbits, out popped these little fawns and away they went bounding and skipping, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, with Storm, Grumble and the dogs at their heels. In about a quarter of an hour we had left the dogs behind and were close upon our prey. Down went the little creatures in the grass, and, overcome with terror and fatigue, were at our mercy. So we shouted to Fritz, and—'
`My dear boy,' said I, `according to your statement, Fritz must have been seven miles and a half off.'
`Oh, well, father, perhaps we did not ride for quite a quarter of an hour, and, of course, I can't say exactly how fast we were going; and then, you see, the fawns did not run in a straight line; at any rate Fritz heard us, and he and Franz and I leashed the legs of the pretty creatures, and then we mounted again, and presently saw a wretch of a cuckoo, who led us ever so far out of our course by cuckooing and making faces at us and then hopping away. Franz declared it must be an enchanted princess, and so I thought I would rid it of its spell; but Fritz stopped me shooting it, and said it was a "Honey Indicator", and that it was leading us probably to a bees' byke, so we spared its life, and presently, sure enough, it stopped close by a bees' nest in a hollow tree.
`This was capital, we thought, and, as we were in a great hurry to taste the honey, I threw in a lot of lighted lucifer matches, but somehow it did not kill the bees at all, but only made them awfully angry, and they flew out in a body and stung me all over. I rushed to Storm and sprang on his back, but, though I galloped away for bare life, it was an age before I got rid of the little wretches, and now my face is in a perfect fever. I think I will get mother to bathe it for me,' and off rushed the noisy boy, leaving Fritz and me to see to the fawns and examine the rabbits.
With these latter I determined to do as Fritz proposed, namely, to colonize Whale Island with them. I was all the more willing to do this because I had been considering the advisability of establishing on that island a fortress to which we might retreat in any extreme danger, and where we should be very thankful, in case of such a retreat, to possess means of obtaining a constant supply of animal food.
Having ministered to the wants of the antelopes, I tried to interest the boys in my discovery of the block of talc, but just then their mother summoned us to dinner.
The principal dish in this meal consisted of the bears' paws—most savoury-smelling delicacies, so tempting that their close resemblance to human hands, and even the roguish `Fee-fo-fum' from Jack, did not prevent a single member of the family from enjoying them most heartily.
Supper over, we lit our watch-fire, retired to our tent and slept soundly.
We had been working very diligently; the bears' meat was smoked, the fat melted down and stored, and a large supply of bamboos collected. But I wished to make yet another excursion, and at early dawn I aroused the boys.