Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/222

 214 waited, but seeing that he was doing this in vain, followed Kali. In the ravine Mea was already engaged in cutting the thorns for a zareba, while Nell, picking with her little fingers the last guinea-fowl, asked:

"Did you whistle for Saba? He ran after you."

"He ran after a buffalo which I wounded with a shot, and I am worried," Stas answered. "Those animals are terribly ferocious and so powerful that even a lion fears to attack them. Saba may fare badly if he begins a fight with such an adversary."

Hearing this Nell became alarmed and declared that she would not go to sleep until Saba returned. Stas, seeing her grief, was angry at himself because he had not concealed the danger from her and began to comfort her:

"I would go after them with the rifle," he said, "but they must now be very far away, and soon the night will fall and the tracks will be invisible. The buffalo is badly wounded, and I have a hope that he will fall. In any case he will weaken through loss of blood, and if he should rush at Saba, Saba will be able to run away. Yes! he may return during the night, but he surely will return."

Although he said this, he did not greatly believe his own words, for he remembered what he had read of the extraordinarily revengeful nature of the African buffalo, which, though heavily wounded, will run about in a circuit and lie in ambush near a path over which the hunter goes and afterwards attack him unexpectedly, pin him on its horns, and toss him into the air. Something similar might happen to Saba; not to speak of other dangers which threatened him on the return to the camp during the night.

In fact night soon fell. Kali and Mea put up a zareba, built a fire, and prepared supper. Saba did not return.