He spoke, too, of our enlistment in the Imperial Police, and the hopes we had of advancement, which not only brought no response from me, but left us both brooding sullenly on our wrongs, crouched there over the rough camp-table under the stars.
“Oh, hell!” muttered Speed, “I’m going to bed.”
But he did not move. Presently he said, “How did you ever come to handle wild animals?”
“I’ve always been fond of animals; I broke colts at home; I had bear cubs and other things. Then, in Algiers, the regiment caught a couple of lions and kept them in a cage, and—well, I found I could do what I liked with them.”
“They’re afraid of your eyes, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know—perhaps it’s that; I can’t explain it—or, rather, I could partly explain it by saying that I am not afraid of them. But I never trust them.”
“You drag them all around the cage! You shove them about like sacks of meal!”
“Yes,... but I don’t trust them.”
“It seems to me,” said Speed, “that your lions are getting rather impudent these days. They’re not very much afraid of you now.”
“Nor I of them,” I said, wearily; “I’m much more anxious about you when you go sailing about in that patched balloon of yours. Are you never nervous?”