appearing when they are not wanted, and keeping studiously out
of the way when their presence is required. Of course it was possible
that if she had found Jim-Jim to her liking she would come back to see
if there were any more of his kind about, but still it was not to be
relied on.

"Harry, who as I have said was an eminently practical boy, suggested to
Pharaoh that he should go and sit outside the skerm in the moonlight as
a sort of bait, assuring him that he would have nothing to fear, as
we should certainly kill the lioness before she killed him. Pharaoh
however, strangely enough, did not seem to take to this suggestion.
Indeed, he walked away, much put out with Harry for having made it.

"It gave me an idea, however.

"'By Jove!' I said, 'there is the sick ox. He must die sooner or later,
so we may as well utilize him.'

"Now, about thirty yards to the left of our skerm, as one stood facing
down the hill towards the river, was the stump of a tree that had been
destroyed by lightning many years before, standing equidistant between,
but a little in front of, two clumps of bush, which were severally some
fifteen paces from it.

"Here was the very place to tie the ox; and accordingly a little before
sunset the sick animal was led forth by Pharaoh and made fast there,
little knowing, poor brute, for what purpose; and we began our long
vigil, this time without a fire, for our object was to attract the
lioness and not to scare her.

"For hour after hour we waited, keeping ourselves awake by pinching each
other--it is, by the way, remarkable what a difference of opinion as
to the force of pinches requisite to the occasion exists in the mind of
pincher and pinched--but no lioness came. At last the moon went down,
and darkness swallowed up the world, as the Kaffirs say, but no lions
came to swallow us up. We waited till dawn, because we did not dare to
go to sleep, and then at last with many bad thoughts in our hearts we
took such rest as we could get, and that was not much.

"That morning we went out shooting, not because we wanted to, for we
were too depressed and tired, but because we had no more meat. For three
hours or more we wandered about in a broiling sun looking for something
to kill, but with absolutely no results. For some unknown reason the
game had grown very scarce about the spot, though when I was there two
years before every sort of large game except rhinoceros and elephant
was particularly abundant.