Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/638

620 fence round them is not strong, I think you bad better tie the bullocks up to their yokes." Advice from such a source was not to be disregarded, for this man had spent all his life among the wild beasts of interior Africa, and knew their habits and haunts as well as we do those of any of our domestic animals. Thus, after much trouble, and with the assistance of my lanterns, the bullocks were removed from the kraal and made fast to their respective yokes, while the end of the trek-tow farthest from the wagon was firmly secured to a tree by the aid of a green rheim, the brake on the after-wheels being firmly jammed down. Having taken these precautions. William bade me goodnight and turned in among his companions under my desert house. The poet says. "Coming events cast their shadows before." Some feeling of this kind must have actuated me, for I had an intuitive perception that, before daybreak made its appearance, some misfortune or other would occur. Again and again I filled my pipe, and almost as often took my rifles from their rack, to assure myself that their breeches were not under the drip that came from many a rent in the tilt. I tried to read, but, although I had that wonderfully entertaining work, "The Woman in White," I could not concentrate my mind upon it.

Twice I had gone forth and added fuel to the far from brilliant watch-fires, and while doing so did not fail to observe that none of the bullocks had lain down, but with anxious, distended eves gazed earnestly up to windward. Trek oxen are, without exception, obstinate, perverse creatures, sometimes taking alarm where nothing is to be dreaded, at other times not taking the slightest precaution to avoid danger where it must have been obvious to them. So, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. I retook myself to my shelter. I had about finished another pipe, when a sudden prolonged pull upon the trek-tow so violently shook my domicile that, if proper precautions had not been taken, it doubtless would have been overturned. At this moment my Bechuana boy placed his head under the curtain of the tilt, and in smothered words told me that he knew there were lions round us. Not doubting the truth of his statement, I professed to disbelieve it, for. said I. "Why don't the doss challenge them? Where are the lazy curs?"

William for that was my boy's name promptly answered: "If one or two lions here, dogs bark: but I think that there are seven or eight. and that they are scattered round about us. so that does are afraid to go into the bush." Scarcely had my boy done speaking when I thought that the wagon must really go over, for the horses that were tied to the sheltered side of it commenced to pull and jerk their halters with such violence as several times to raise the weather wheels an inch or two off the ground. As nothing so reassures these animals, when alarmed, as the human voice, I got out of my domicile and stood at their heads and talked to them in such kindly language