I had expected Jack and Harry would be enthusiastic and loquacious over the experiences of the day; on the contrary, they were decidedly moody and silent, and I came to the conclusion that both were in love and unwilling to admit it. What made the case a little awkward was that they were both in love with one woman. Had they respectively been in love with the two women they would undoubtedly have been more talkative; but when their devotion was fastened upon one and the same individual it gave a fine chance for that verdant-eyed monster known as Jealousy. They were jealous up to the eyes—jealous all over; and from being the best of friends, they seemed to have developed, all in a day, a very pronounced feeling of hatred. Their silence toward each other drove me into a condition of taciturnity, and as we sat down to supper we were as sociable as mourners at a funeral feast where each expects that he has been left out in the will of the deceased, and the rest have got it all.
After we had eaten awhile in such profound quiet, I suggested that the method of stalking with oxen might be followed with other game than giraffes.
Silence prevailed for half a minute or more, when Harry spoke, saying, "Do you think so?"
Jack uttered not a word.
"Yes," I replied, "I certainly think so; it might be a good way to get close up to buffaloes or rhinoceroces, and possibly to elephants."
"Yes," said Jack, suddenly, "and lions too!"
"No trouble about that," I answered; "you wouldn't have to get up to the lions; the lions would get up to you very quickly, and the ox would make off as fast as he could. I am afraid it would be a bad business, both for the ox and the hunter, so far as lions are concerned."
"That reminds me," I remarked, "of the last time before this when I came on a hunting-expedition up-country. We were trekking, one day, through an open sort of plain, where there were sufficient trees to afford cover up to within a hundred yards of the road. We had nine yoke of oxen hauling the wagon, and about twelve extra oxen driven along behind the wagon—the way, in fact, that most expeditions come up from the coast. I was on my best horse, and the other horses were ridden by the fore-looper, after-rider, manager, and others of our party. Everybody was in his place; and as we had not seen any large game, I was carrying my small rifle, ready to pick off any ordinary thing that came in our way.
"We were not very far from the settlements, and not a lion had been seen, nor the spoor of one. Suddenly a big lion came bounding out of the forest, making straight for the loose bunch of oxen at the rear of the wagon. He started from the cover of a bush which may have been fifty yards from the trail; I don't think it was more than that. You know in what a short time a lion can go fifty yards when he gives his whole mind to it; it didn't seem to me ten seconds from the time we saw the brute till he sprang on one of the oxen, killing him by a single stroke of his enormous paw, and setting his teeth in the neck of the unfortunate beast. It was all the work of a few seconds. The men ran in all directions except toward the lion; I brought my small rifle to bear, and gave the fellow a shot. It was enough to anger him, and nothing more. He gave a fierce growl, and seemed half inclined to come at me; and my only salvation was that he was very hungry and fell at once to devouring the ox."
Here I paused purposely, to compel one of my comrades to say something. Harry broke the silence by asking me what I did.