Читать книгу The Claw - Stockley Cynthia - Страница 6

“And there’s no end of voyaging

When once the voice is heard,

For the river calls, and the road calls,

And oh! the call of the bird.”

I suppose I fainted, and later perhaps I slept. At any rate it seemed, and must have been, a long while afterwards that I waked up to a sound so pleasant and comforting that I believed at first I must still be in the land of strange dreams in which my mind had been wandering. But I presently realised that though I was still lying curled up in the cart, it really was the sound of wood crackling and burning in a fire, and that the aromatic flavour in the air was the smoke of wood mingled with the curiously sweet scent of burning leaves and branches, still hissing with sap. Very softly I raised myself upon a cramped elbow and looked out of the cart. The place was transformed. The circular clearing, no longer gaunt and terrifying but a scene of tall enchanted trees and frondy ferns, was lit up with leaping rose-and-amber lights from four large fires built at the corners of a square. The post-cart, well within the radius, had a munching horse tethered to it, while stretched at full length on a rug in the firelight was a man.

He was lying carelessly at his ease, and by the flickering light of the fires looking through a number of letters and papers. One hand supported a determined-looking jaw; the rest of his face was hidden under a hat with so evil a slouch to it that it might easily have belonged to a burglar. He wore no coat; only a grey flannel shirt open at the neck, with a dark blue and crimson striped handkerchief (the kind of thing college men put on after boating or football) knotted loosely round his bare throat. His khaki riding-breeches were “hitched” round him on a leather belt from which also depended a heavy Service revolver and a knife-case. By the side of him on the rug lay a gun. He was evidently taking no risks as far as lions were concerned.

I began to have an extraordinary curiosity to see his face. Moreover I longed with a fervent longing not only to get out and sit in the warmth of those homely and attractive fires, but to speak with another human being. If he would only look up, I thought, and let me see whether or not he had an honest face! I could not trust that hat. With such a hat he might be a horse thief, an escaped convict, an I.D.B., or a pirate on a holiday, and though any of those might possibly be interesting persons to meet I felt that the time and place were hardly suitable for such a rencontre. The only thing to do was to lie perdue until I was able to come to some conclusion as to what manner of man he was. Even while I so decided he moved.

Sitting straight up he rolled the letter he had been reading into a ball and aimed it with violence and precision at the nearest fire, uttering at the same time some bad and bitter words that came quite clearly to my ears. However, I was by that time inured to bad language. Every one in South Africa uses it when they think you are not listening. Also, it is apparently the only language that mules and oxen understand for drivers never speak any other. I had become so accustomed to wicked words that I no longer took the slightest notice of them.

To my amazement I discovered that he was muttering verse to himself—bits of Stevenson:

“Sing me a song of a lad that is gone.

Say, can that lad be I?

Merry of heart he sailed on a day,

Over the sea to Skye.

* * * * *

Glory of youth glowed in his veins

Where is that glory now?”

He whipped the muffler from his neck at this and flung it down, then drove his hands into his pockets and continued his sullen chant:

“Give me again all that was there.

Give me the sun that shone.

Give me the heart, give me the eyes,

Give me the lad that is gone!”

He flung off his hat. I was able to get some idea of his general appearance then, as he passed up and down in the varying lights and shadows, and that too seemed strangely reminiscent of some one I had known. But I was disappointed to find that he didn’t look the least bit like the hero of a romance. He was not even tall. What was worse he had the most awful hair. It was black and lank like an Indian’s and distinctly thin in front, and one strand of it like a rag of black silk kept falling away from the rest and hanging down between his bad-tempered blue eyes—at least I felt sure they must be bad-tempered, and I had to come to the conclusion that they were blue, because every time he passed the fire I got a suggestion of blue. He perpetually smeared the rag of hair back from his eyes and it as perpetually fell down again. A curious thing about him was the way he moved, so softly and firmly on his feet, yet without making a sound, and when he reached the end of one of his enforced marches he swung round in the same pleasing way that the sail of a boat swings in the wind. It was hard to admit that a sort of burglar in riding-breeches could interest one by the way he walked, but I had to admit after a time, that there was a queer distinction and grace about him. He made a further remark to the stars:

“‘Give me again all that was there.’ But what for, good Lord? To let women wipe their boots on and throw in the mud! Ah, they leave one nothing! They throw down every shrine one sets up.”

I began to feel almost as safe as when the lions were prowling around.

“This terrible Africa is full of brutes!” I said to myself. “If I once get out of it, will I ever come back again? No!”

The man suddenly left off tramping, and going to each of the fires fed them in turn from a large pile of wood which he had evidently collected on arrival. Then he came to his horse and putting his arm round its neck spoke to it in a voice curiously sweet, quite unlike that in which he had been reviling women; and the horse whinnied softly to him in return.

“Dear old Belle!” he said, “you’ve had a rough time, but there’s a rest coming—a good rest coming and after that boot-and-saddle! We’ll get away from them all once more; and maybe if we have any luck, we’ll get a rest once and for all—a long, long rest—under the wide and starry sky.”

I was ashamed to hear these intimate bitter things he was confiding to his horse with his arm round her neck and his face bent. But could I help it? Only I was no longer afraid. I felt that in spite of his fierce and violent words there was nothing to fear from him.

Walking back to his rug he threw himself down once more, this time on his back, clasping his hands under his head and closing his eyes. In a few moments he was sleeping as peacefully as a child.

It really seemed after awhile that I might venture to descend. Apparently there was no danger to be anticipated from any quarter. He had guarded against lions by making fires and now he himself was asleep. There was nothing to fear but still I was horribly afraid. As quietly and carefully as possible I unknotted myself and crawled out of the cart, for I was really too stiff and weary to do anything but crawl, and when at last I stood on the ground by the step, my legs would hardly support me. However, I eventually gained the courage and strength to steal to the nearest fire and stretch my numbed fingers to the blaze. It was so big that I was able to warm myself without stooping, a fact I was intensely grateful for: I felt that I should never want to sit or kneel again for the rest of my life.

The man slept peacefully on. I could not see him clearly for the firelight dazed my eyes, but I could hear his quiet and regular breathing. Later I crept closer and gave another glance to the face I was so curious to see. At the same moment a bright flicker of light passed right over his eyes and I saw that they were open and regarding me with a wide and steady stare. Without a sound he rose to his feet.

My hands dropped to my sides, and I drew myself up to my full height, prepared (though my heart was nearly jumping out of my body) to be very calm and dignified indeed to this woman-hater who could only be nice to horses. As for him, the wind was entirely out of his sails also: he simply stood there staring at me, dumb with amazement at finding one of the hated brood of women in his camp. I might have got a good deal of malicious satisfaction out of the situation if I had not been almost stunned into confusion and astonishment myself in the revelation that the man who stood staring at me was the dark, blue-eyed man with whom I had talked about Africa three years before at the Viceregal Lodge. I recognised in a moment his extraordinarily vivid eyes with the careless lids that covered so intent a glance. And there were the little bits of blue turquoise still stuck in his ears!

I can only account for not having recognised him earlier by the fact that I had not really seen his eyes. He was one of those men whom you might pass without a glance, thinking him ordinary, until you looked in his face or he spoke to you. Then you saw at once that he was not ordinary at all, that so far from being short he was seemingly at least about three heads taller than most men, also that his hair was perfectly nice, and what was better perfectly original. In his crakey, thrilly voice he was now assuring me that he had never supposed for an instant that there was any one in the post-cart.

“And a lady, good God!—I mean it is unbelievable; but where is your driver? Do you mean to say, Madam, that you have been here alone in that cart all the evening?”

Madam! That was funny, though I did not much care about being taken for a madam. But of course he could see nothing of my face through my thick veil.

“Yes,” I said. “The driver gave me my choice between being shut into the stable with the mules or staying out here in the cart alone. I preferred this.”

“The infernal scoundrel! The—” His mouth shut, he hastily swallowed something, doubtless more profanity. “The scoundrel!” he repeated.

“The river is full. He said we could not cross to-night.”

“That is true, but his business was to make fires here and guard you. This is one of the most dangerous places in Africa. I cannot think, Madam, how you came to be on such a journey alone and unprotected. Some one is gravely to blame.”

“No, indeed,” I faltered. “No one is to blame but myself. I insisted on taking this journey against all advice. If the lions had eaten me it would have been my own fault.”

I don’t know what was the matter with me, but suddenly the remembrance of all my terrors overwhelmed me and I began to cry. I never thought I could have been so utterly silly and ridiculous, but the cause was something that I had no control over, something quite outside myself; it may have been the reaction of suddenly feeling so safe after all my misery, or that his voice was the kind of voice that stirs one up to doing things one didn’t intend to do; really I don’t know. Only, I cried quite foolishly and brokenly for a few moments like a child, and he took hold of my hands and patted them and said ever so kindly:

“There, there—don’t cry, for Heaven’s sake don’t cry—it’s all right now—you’re quite safe—I’ll take care of you. And I’ll hammer that, brute within an inch of his life to-morrow morning,” he added savagely.

He made me sit on his rug by the fire, while he went over to the cart and hauled out mail-bags and cushions and rugs, all bundled up together, and dragged them over by the fire, and in two minutes had a most delightful sort of lounge-seat ready for me. I never thought other people’s letters and parcels could be so comfortable and useful.

“Now,” said he, “have you got anything to eat or drink? I am sorry to say I haven’t a thing. I’m ‘travelling light,’ and expected to cross the river to-night and get to Madison’s for dinner.”

Of course I had a travelling basket with plenty of tinned things in it, and some stale bread. There was also tea and a little kettle which he filled from the water-bag under the cart and had over the fire in the twinkling of an eye, while I spread a napkin on the ground and laid out as invitingly as possible such provisions as I had. Then, while he was once more replenishing the fires, I pulled a little mirror from my vanity bag, and by its aid removed some of the dust which by reason of my tears had now turned to mud on my face. I arranged my veil over my hat, and my dainty, tragic brown face looked back at me from the hand-glass. I say tragic because so many people have said it before of me and I’ve got used to the word but I could never really see myself what suggested it. Only I know that I am rather original looking. I do not profess to be pretty: but I am unusual; and I have nice bones, and the shades of brown and amber in my eyes and hair are really rather charming; and I know I’ve a good line from my ear to my chin—one cannot study sculpture without getting to recognise fine lines whether in one’s self or other people.

When he came back with the kettle of boiling water, I knelt by the cloth and made the tea, while he stared at me in perfect silence. Perhaps he was surprised to see that I didn’t look much like a madam after all. He made no sign of recognition, which was rather disappointing, but I did not mind at the time as I was so frightfully hungry. So was he. There was not the faintest attempt on the part of either of us to disguise the fact that we each possessed what Dick called an “edge.” We drank our tea and fell like wolves upon the sandwiches I had made of stale bread and potted turkey. We also cleaned up a tin of sardines, about three pounds of biscuits, and a pot of strawberry jam. We ate like schoolboys and were as merry as thieves in a wood. It did not seem in the least strange to be sitting there under the stars in that wild place taking possession of a large meal with a man who did not know my name nor I his. Nothing is strange on the veldt! Besides, I felt as if I had known him all my life, even if he did not recognise me. All the same, I was aware that he never ceased to stare at me intently, with the little rag of black hair hanging between his blue eyes. He told me he was riding across country from Tuli to Fort George. He had been buying waggons and horses in the Transvaal for the Chartered Company.

“I suppose you know you have come to this part of Africa at a very bad time?” he said. “The Chartered Company is going to send an expedition into Matabeleland against Lobengula. Almost all the men in the country will be needed to fight, and while they are away in Matabeleland the ladies in Mashonaland will all be shut up in forts. That will not be very interesting. It would have been better for you to have postponed your journey until a little later.”

“Au contraire,” said I. “It is far more interesting to be in a country while history is being made than to arrive afterwards when everything is settled and dull. But why are we going to war with Lobengula?”

He laughed at the “we” which slipped in unconsciously.

“Ah! I see you are one of us already, so I can tell you all about it. Well, Loben has been behaving very badly for a long while. Ever since the Chartered Company took possession of Mashonaland he has been harassing us in various ways. But lately he has taken to serious menace. Large impis of his armed warriors have been raiding across the border laid down by agreement between the two countries, murdering the Mashonas who are under our protection, and taking up a very threatening and insolent attitude to any white men who remonstrate with him. He has paid no attention to official remonstrance, either, but broken promise after promise, so that at last we have had to take things into our own hands. If we don’t they’ll wipe out every white man in Mashonaland one of these days. So we are going to invade them and break their power once and for all. There is a chance of some interesting fighting first, though, for the Matabele are twenty thousand strong, all in fighting trim, and as ferocious as the Zulus from whom they are descended. Now, are you sorry you’ve come?”

“Not at all,” I laughed. “Afterwards, when this is all over, I may have an opportunity of seeing Lobengula’s fifty wives. That is one of my most important reasons for coming out to Africa. That and prowling lions; however, I think I’ve had more than enough of them.”

He began to laugh.

“You won’t find Lobengula’s wives very enchanting, if you do succeed in seeing them; and there are only six, by the way. But where did you get your experience of lions?”

“Here!” said I, and told him something of what I had gone through; only something. I did not think it necessary to go into details about my terror, nor to tell him I had fainted. I left him to suppose that I had been asleep when he came to camp. He looked at me keenly at this part of my story, remembering, I suppose, his pleasant remarks about women. But I returned his gaze with frank eyes.

“Ah! I heard those shots,” he said at last. “I was about two miles off then, and supposed some one was camping round here, but I could not locate them at all; no sign or smell of fire anywhere; so on finding the river full I camped here, ready to cross the drift the first thing in the morning. I looked into the post-cart, but only casually, for naturally I didn’t expect any one to be in it. I guessed that the driver had locked himself in with the mules—they usually do in such circumstances, but not when there are passengers. Those were not lions, by the way. As soon as I got here I knew by the behaviour of my horse that there had been beasts of some kind about, and when I had made fires I looked for spoor and found traces of about half-a-dozen hyenas. They must have been hungry, too, for they had chewed the mule harness to ribbons.”

He smiled at me gaily, but I felt myself turning pale.

“Hyenas! How horrible! How glad I am I did not know! I’d much rather they had been lions!”

“Thank God they were not,” he said quietly. “I’m afraid your revolver would not have been much use. Hyenas, on the contrary, hardly ever touch a human being, and are easily scared off.”

“But they laugh!” I cried, shuddering, and then sprang to my feet, for the most terrifying noise I had ever heard in my life suddenly split the stillness and rang around us. I have heard lions roar in the Zoo, and that is bad enough; but the cry of a caged lion is a dove-like call compared to the awe-inspiring, mournful, belching, hollow roar of the king of beasts when he makes his presence known to the wide and empty veldt. My companion was on his feet too.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly, “but get into the cart again as quickly as possible.”

I obeyed without the least delay, another roar, closer at hand, considerably accelerating my steps. In a moment I was back in my old place on the floor; and he was swiftly untethering the horse from the back of the cart, to fasten it in front, more fully in the glare of the fires. Then he stepped into the driver’s place, and half-sitting, half-stooping, laid his rifle across the splash-board, right over the horse’s head. We waited.

“Don’t make a sound,” he said over his shoulder. There was no alarm in his voice, but rather a kind of gay elation, and my fear immediately died away. I began to watch and listen with interest for what was to happen next. There were no more roars, only an ominous stillness, that was broken presently by the restless moving and shuddering of the horse. The poor beast began to try to break loose and get away, but its master leaning forward, spoke to it in a soothing gentle voice, and the terrified creature was presently quiet, except for an occasional shudder that it could not control.

Silence again for a time that seemed hours, then at last the click of a broken twig that sounded to my straining ears like a pistol shot. There was just the faintest suspicion of a rustling of leaves. An instant later something in my companion’s intent gaze and attitude told me that the psychological moment had come. He could see something, and was taking aim. I glanced at the dim, shadowy mass of foliage towards which his rifle pointed, and for one moment saw nothing. Then something huge and pale and massive came bounding high in the air out of the shadows, and the horse cried out like a human being. The Martini-Henry cracked twice and a blinding flash of gunpowder filled the air. Later I heard my friend’s voice speaking to his leaping horse and as the smoke died away my dazed eyes saw lying stretched between the fires something that had not been there before. The only sounds to be heard were the creaking of the cart caused by the shudderings of the horse, and the chattering of my teeth. I don’t know which was the louder. But I know that I crouched beside the man’s knee and was grateful and glad for one of his strong brown hands on mine, and his crakey, thrilly voice saying close to my ear:

“There is no danger. Only we must be quiet. There’s probably another of them about. I should like to pot him too.”

Needless to say, I sat still with all my might. The great honey-coloured body fascinated my eyes, but there was something extraordinarily reassuring in the scent of mingled gunpowder and tobacco that hung about the grey flannel sleeve so close to me. We sat in silence for what must have been nearly an hour and nothing happened: no more roars, no sound anywhere but the far cry of the jackal, and the rush of the river. It was my companion who at last broke the spell, speaking in a low, absent voice, almost like a man in a reverie.

“So you have come to Africa after all, Miss Saurin!”

I could hardly believe my ears were not playing me false. It seemed the strangest thing of all the strange things that had come to pass that night that he should know my name and speak it thus. He had recognised me after all, then! In the same voice of gentle reverie he spoke again, staring not at me but straight before him.

”—And this is the way she receives you!”

“You know my name?” I faltered.

“Of course. Do you think I could ever forget your face?”

I felt my cheeks grow hot. I was not unused to hearing men say charming, flattering things, and I knew very well how to parry them. But there was something so unusual in the quiet serenity of this man’s words and the vibration of his beautiful voice that I could not lightly turn aside his strange answer. I am all woman, too, and could not refrain from feeling a little thrill of pleasure in what he said. It is surely something rather sweet to be remembered for three years by a man to whom one has spoken only once, for a few minutes, in a crowded ball-room.

“And that dance—I think you remember the dance we had together—and our talk of Africa. You said you would love to come out here, and I told you then you surely would. I think you must remember?”

There was something so appealing and yet compelling in his question that I felt obliged to answer him sincerely, though such worldly wisdom as I possessed strongly counselled me to do otherwise.

“Yes, I have always remembered,” I said, and found myself remembering other things, too, vividly: the way his words had moved me, the way my lids had fallen under his strong glance.

“And you are still Miss Saurin? Deirdre Saurin?”

It would be impossible to describe the beauty and gentleness of his voice as he so unexpectedly spoke my name. It sounded almost as if he were blessing me.

“You did not many Herriott after all? But you could not have, or he would be here. No man who married you would ever leave your side.”

That was ridiculous, of course. I felt it was ridiculous, but he said it so convincingly that I almost believed it. In fact, I was obliged to recognise that this man was very convincing indeed. You could not treat his remarks with the indifference they deserved, even if you wanted to. However, there was one thing I felt I ought to make clear to him, though it was rather embarrassing to say these things.

“I think as you know so much,” I stammered, “you ought to know a little more. I was never engaged to Lord Herriott.”

“But I was told by two different people that night, both relatives of his, that you were engaged; that the announcement was to be made immediately.”

“They had no right to say so,” I said firmly. “We were never engaged.”

“Will you tell me that he never asked you to marry him?”

“I cannot tell you more than I have,” I answered rather stiffly.

“And you think it insolence on my part to ask so much?” His voice had gone back to reverie and his eyes to the dying fires. “Do not think that, Miss Saurin. Insolence has no place near you in my mind and memory. It was no business of mine I suppose whether you refused Herriott, or why. In any case I should have left Ireland at once as I did. Only—I wish to God I had known in all these years.”

I had to realise at last that this man was making love to me, and that the fact aroused in my heart neither anger nor indignation. I felt not the slightest disposition to reprove him, but rather to go on sitting there for ever listening to his strange burning words and vibrating voice. It seemed to me suddenly that I was listening to an old song I had known all my life, but had never before heard set to music. My heart began to flutter like a wild bird in my breast and a trembling thrilled me unlike any trembling I had known through the past hours of darkness and fear. A faintness stole over my senses. I, too, had kept my gaze straight before me while we talked, but now, while I felt myself growing pale to the lips with some strange emotion, I turned my eyes his way and found him looking at me. Glance burnt glance. His blue, intent eyes searching in mine as if for something that was his. Mine reading in his—I know not what—something I had long known dimly but dared not recognise. In that moment I realised why I had come to Africa. I knew why I had refused Herriott. It was for the sake of seeing again this strange man with the voice that pulled at my heart-strings and the burning eyes that searched in mine as if for something that was his. And now, alone with him in this wild and desolate spot, where conventions and all the superficialities of life fell sheer away, and left us just simple man and woman, I was afraid of the poignant sweetness and wonder of it. I was afraid for my immortal soul.

For the second time that night, and half unconsciously, I put up my hand, and as do all good Catholics in the supreme moments of life, crossed myself. I hardly knew what I had done until I found my right hand touching the shoulder nearest him and almost as if in answer to my action, which he could not have failed to observe, he lifted his hand, which still lay upon my left hand, and pushed back from his eyes the fallen streak of hair. Afterwards he did not replace it, though mine still lay where he left it.

“You are a Catholic?” he said abruptly.

“Yes, the Saurins have always been Catholics,” I answered. Then a silence fell between us that I feared. For some reason I did not understand, I began, in a voice at first a little strained and uncertain, to tell him of the love there had always been in my family for the beautiful old faith, of how much its forms and ceremonies meant to even the most irreligious of us. I told him legends of long-dead rakes and scamps among my paternal ancestors who, forsaking their sins, had gone from their own country to fight for the faith they loved in other lands. How never a Saurin for three centuries had died without a scapular about his throat and a De profundis on his lips. I told him how my mother, coming of a rigid Protestant American family, had yet, for love of my Irish father, embraced his faith with all the fervour of the convert, and taught me to love it as she did herself. I told him things, I knew not why, that had never been told out of my family before. Whether he was interested in my facts or the soft and even flow of my voice I cannot say, but the sweet and dangerous silence was dispersed, and a kind of fragrant peace fell around us, cooling our hands and quieting our hearts.

“Catholicism was the faith of my fathers, too,” he said at last, “but I suppose we fell away from it through wandering far from our own land. I have never practised Catholicism or anything else. What religion the love of my mother put into my heart is there still, and I recognise it in great moments—at this moment—but oh, Lord! Where do these things go? The clean, fair dreams of our youth, the fine visions we began to fight with, the generosity wide as the horizon! All lost in the scuffle, buried under the mud and scum. Do you know that tag of verse—

“‘In the mud and scum of things

Something, something always sings?’

“It is something, I suppose, in the end, if we still can hear the singing. There is some rag of grace left in us, perhaps, if we can recognise a man like Rhodes when we see him, and, leaving all, go after him into the wilderness to do or die for a man with bigger dreams than our own—but it isn’t much, by God! considering what dreams we ourselves set out with!”

He seemed for the moment to have forgotten me, and to be communing with the desolation of his own soul. I offered him no word. Something told me then, that no woman can quite comfort a man for his lost dreams. At the best she may be able to create others for him; but surely they are never quite the same as those first dreams that had the freshness of the morning on them. Even as I mourned for him his mood changed, and he laughed with a laugh that turned him into a joyous boy.

“Listen to the river!” said he, laughing. “Listen to the jackals chanting their dirge of the empty stomach! Smell the rolling leagues of emptiness! Look at that beauty lying there in the grass! Oh, I tell you, this is good enough for a man! One can get back some of the old fair visions here. One might even go back to the ‘gold for silver’ creed that Whyte Melville put into some of us long ago!”

“The ‘gold for silver’ creed?”

“Do you not know your Bones and I? They were the last of my prophets.”

He began to misquote, laughing a little, but without any bitterness at all now:

“Gold for silver: old lamps for new: stack your capital in the bank that in the end pays cent for cent—the bank of human kindness, where the bonds are charity, help to the broken-down, sympathy with the bust-up, protection to the weak-kneed, encouragement to the forlorn, etc; and afterwards the inscription on your tomb or in some one’s memory:

“‘What he spent he had: what he saved he lost! What he gave he has.’

“Ah! what a long time since I heard those words, and believed that any one could be such a fool as to try and live up to them!”

“How can you say that?” I said. “It is still your creed. If ever any one protected the weak-kneed and encouraged the forlorn you have done it to-night.”

At that we both began to laugh. The shadows had fled from his brow, and his face had no more marks on it than Dick’s when he and I played together as children. Indeed, we were both as happy as children. Later he stepped down from the cart to feed the fires and fetch my rugs from where they still lay on the ground. He wrapped them round me, for the air had grown very chill, and told me to sleep. And I did, for the heavy weariness of the small morning hours had suddenly stolen upon me.

When I awoke the stars were pale in the sky, and dawn, with pearl and purple and amber on her feet, was treading the distant hills. A long line of red-legged birds streaked overhead, calling to each other as they passed. The rush of the river, which could now be plainly seen glinting between the trees, was like music on the air. A cloak of silver dew lay over grass and fern and the massed foliage of the bush; and little veldt flowers were lifting their pink faces to give forth a sweet scent. Against the faint rose and amber of the horizon a blue spiral of smoke ascended from a newly-built fire, on which the kettle was already boiling for breakfast. The only grim thing to be seen in all that fair place was the long, honey-coloured body of the dead lion, stretched upon the carpet of grass and flowers. His great shaggy head lay amidst a mass of bright wild lilies: but already little beetles and ants were busy about his blood-reddened mouth and open eyes. It was the only joyless thing to be seen, but it had no power to sadden me. I, too, was full of the glad spirit of morning, and my singing heart gave thanks as it had never done before for the magic gift of life.