As the gazelles and the antelopes were nipping at the leaves, there appeared among them a bongo, the rarest and most beautiful antelope of the forest. They all looked at the new-comer with amazement, and riveted their big black eyes upon him.
Their astonishment was great, for they never had seen one like him before. No wonder, for there were so few bongos. His graceful shape and long spiral horns told them he was an antelope.
“How beautiful you are!” cried all the kambis and ncheris at once. “You are the loveliest kambi we have ever seen. The bright yellow orange color of your skin, and the many milk-white stripes on your sides are a delight to look at!”
“My beauty is my curse, dear kambis and ncheris,” replied the bongo; “my yellow color and my white stripes are my bane, for my enemies, which are also yours, can spy me farther and quicker than they do you.”
The kambis and the ncheris could not take their eyes away from the bongo. They admired him more and more, and proclaimed him the most charming creature of the forest.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE OSHINGI, OR CIVET
An oshingi with its beautiful, spotted, leopard-like skin, and pretty, long-ringed tail, was cosily sleeping one day in the deep and dark hollow of a tree. When the day had passed away, and night had come, he grew restless in his sleep; for the oshingi belongs to the night prowlers. At last he opened his eyes, stretched himself, and yawned several times.
A great storm was raging; the rain was falling heavily, and claps of thunder followed in quick succession. It was a fearful night. As the oshingi listened, he said to himself, “What a nice home I have! not a drop of rain comes in, and the wind cannot penetrate.” Then, with a long sigh, he added, “But a comfortable home does not give me a meal; and a nice home, without food, is a poor one. I have been hungry these last few days, and have several times returned to my lair with an empty stomach, or had only a scanty meal. I have lived too long in this neighborhood, and destroyed so many lives that I have frightened away all the prey. I ought to have departed before this; but I am loath to give up this comfortable home, one of the best that I have ever had.”
No wonder the oshingi loved his lair. The hollow was very deep, cosey and soft at the bottom, and no animals would ever have thought that any one lived there, for the hollow was a few feet above the ground. Though his abode was pitch dark, his glittering eyes could see everything there, through the intense darkness, even the smallest grain of sand, just as if his place had been lighted by electric lights.