“No fear o’ dat,” chimed in our guide, as he sat down on the lion’s shoulder, and began to stroke its mane; “hims was want him’s supper off de zebra, ho! ho! Hims got him’s supper off a bullet!”
“’Tis well that he has,” observed Jack, as he reloaded his rifle. “To say truth, comrades, I scarcely deserve credit for being guardian of the camp, for I’m ashamed to say that I was sound asleep at the moment the lion roared. How I ever managed to take so quick and so good an aim is more than I can tell. Luckily my rifle was handy, and I had fallen asleep in a sitting posture. Had it been otherwise, I could scarcely have been in time to prevent the brute springing on us, had he felt so disposed.”
Here was now another subject for my note-book, so I sat down, and began a minute inspection of the noble-looking animal, while my comrades, heaping fresh logs on the fire, sat down in front of it, and for upwards of an hour, “fought their battles o’er again.”
It was a matter of deep regret to us all that we could not afford to carry away with us the skin of this lion as a memorial; but circumstanced as we then were, that was out of the question, so we contented ourselves with extracting his largest teeth and all his claws, which we still preserve in our museum as trophies of the adventure.
Chapter Seventeen.
We visit a natural menagerie, see wonderful sights, and meet with strange adventures.
We observed, on this journey, that the elephants which we met with in our farthest north point were considerably smaller than those farther to the south, yet though smaller animals, their tusks were much larger then those of the south. The weight of those tusks varied from twenty to fifty pounds, and I saw one that was actually upwards of one hundred pounds in weight—equal, in fact, to the weight of a big boy or a little man. Such tusks, however, were rare.
At nights, when we encamped near to a river or pool of water, we saw immense numbers of elephants come down to drink and enjoy themselves. They seemed, in fact, to be intoxicated with delight, if not with water; for they screamed with joy, and filling their trunks with water, spurted it over themselves and each other in copious showers. Of course, we never disturbed them on such occasions, for we came to the conclusion that it would be the height of barbarity and selfishness to spoil the pleasure of so many creatures merely for the sake of a shot.