A TALE OF THREE LIONS
Page: 11

and mirror-like flashed back the moon, whose silver spears were
shivered on its breast, and then tossed in twisted lines of light far
and wide about the mountains and the plain. Down upon the river-banks
grew great timber-trees that through the stillness pointed solemnly to
Heaven, and the beauty of the night lay upon them like a cloud.
Everywhere was silence--silence in the starred depths, silence on the
bosom of the sleeping earth. Now, if ever, great thoughts might rise
in a man's mind, and for a space he might forget his littleness in the
sense that he partook of the pure immensity about him.

"'Hark! what was that?'

"From far away down by the river there comes a mighty rolling sound,
then another, and another. It is the lion seeking his meat.

"I saw Harry shiver and turn a little pale. He was a plucky boy
enough, but the roar of a lion heard for the first time in the solemn
bush veldt at night is apt to shake the nerves of any lad.

"'Lions, my boy,' I said; 'they are hunting down by the river there;
but I don't think that you need make yourself uneasy. We have been
here three nights now, and if they were going to pay us a visit I
think that they would have done so before this. However, we will make
up the fire.'

"'Here, Pharaoh, do you and Jim-Jim get some more wood before we go to
sleep, else the cats will be purring round you before morning.'

"Pharaoh, a great brawny Swazi, who had been working for me at
Pilgrims' Rest, laughed, rose, and stretched himself, then calling to
Jim-Jim to bring the axe and a reim, started off in the moonlight
towards a clump of sugar-bush where we cut our fuel from some dead
trees. He was a fine fellow in his way, was Pharaoh, and I think that
he had been named Pharaoh because he had an Egyptian cast of
countenance and a royal sort of swagger about him. But his way was a
somewhat peculiar way, on account of the uncertainty of his temper,
and very few people could get on with him; also if he could find
liquor he would drink like a fish, and when he drank he became
shockingly bloodthirsty. These were his bad points; his good ones were
that, like most people of the Zulu blood, he became exceedingly