attempt to get a sight of them now, or
they would certainly spoil their pleasure that evening, and probably
prevent the elephant hunt, which was to take place the next day. The
whole tribe, he said, was going out in the morning, and it was hoped
that a good many animals would be killed; and as there were several very
fine males among them, a large prize in the way of ivory was
anticipated. But if the herd should be disturbed, and especially if it
should be fired upon, they would probably retreat northwards towards the
great lake, and the Bechuanas would see nothing of them but their spoor
and dung.

The boys yielded to his representations; and, turning in a different
direction from that followed by the elephants, they arrived in another
quarter of an hour at Bavian's Pool, which lay in the very heart of the
bush, with a clear space overgrown with grass and short rushes of about
twenty yards all round. On the west side appeared the rocks of which
Kobo had told them, and which presented a most picturesque appearance.
They rose abruptly from the bank of the tarn, to the height of perhaps
twenty feet, and sank down with a sharp descent to the level ground
everywhere, except in one place where a series of crags, piled one on
another, presented a kind of rude and very steep staircase, by which the
top might be attained. Up this the party climbed, and ensconced
themselves snugly under a shelf of rock from which they could see the
whole of the pool and the surrounding banks.

It was still broad daylight when they reached their place of ambush, and
the spot was as vacant and still as though the whole landscape had been
a part of the great Kalahari itself But they had not been there a
quarter of an hour, when the sun disappeared behind the belt of woodland
which bounded the sight, and the night of the tropics succeeded with its
startling rapidity. The green waste of thorns and shrubs grew first
dusky brown, and then deep black; the bright sparkling water a dull
gleamy mirror, faintly rendering back the pale opal of the sky. But
presently there came a further change. The moon rose higher in the
heavens, and the stars came forth in all the unimaginable glories of a
southern night--not mere specks of light as seen in the more cloudy
skies of the north, but hung like cressets in the glowing air, the moon
itself a bright globe of liquid fire. A clear soft radiancy diffused
itself over the whole scene, tipping every tree top