Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/386

 378 "But what?"

"But I thought that you would protect me—I myself do not know—"

Saying this she again threw her little arms around his neck, and he began to stroke her tufts of hair.

"You are not afraid, now?"

"No."

"My little Mzimu! My Mzimu! You see what Africa is."

"Yes, but you will kill every ugly beast?"

"I will."

Both again began to examine closely the rapacious beast. Stas, desiring to preserve its skin as a trophy ordered Kali to strip it off, but the latter from fear that another wobo might creep out of the ravine begged him not to leave him alone, and to the question whether he feared a wobo more than a lion, said:

"A lion roars at night and does not leap over stockades, but a wobo in the white day can leap over a stockade and kill a great many negroes in the middle of the village, and after that he seizes one of them and eats him. Against a wobo a spear is no protection, nor a bow, only charms, for a wobo cannot be killed."

"Nonsense," said Stas, "look at this one; is he not well slain?"

"The white master kills wobo; the black man cannot kill him," Kali replied.

It ended in this, that the gigantic cat was tied by a rope to the horse and the horse dragged him to the camp. Stas, however, did not succeed in preserving his hide, for the King, who evidently surmised that the wobo wanted to carry off his little lady, fell into such a frenzy of rage that even Stas' orders were unable to restrain him. Seizing the slain beast with his trunk he tossed it twice into