e fellow's eyes twinkled as he took the knife which Mark held
out to him and then good-naturedly opened all the blades and closed them
again so that the receiver might fully understand the management of the
wonderful instrument he had never seen before.

"Now, Mak, start them off, and I hope we shall never see them again,"
continued the boy, "for somehow or other I quite like that little
fellow. He's been so patient all through his suffering, and never
hardly winced, when the doctor must have hurt him no end. I don't mean
like him as one would another boy, but as one would a good dog that had
been hurt and which we had nursed back again to getting all right--that
is, I mean," continued the boy confusedly--"Oh, bother! Here, I don't
quite know what I do mean. Ah, there they go. I say, Dean, did you
ever see such a rum little chap in your life, with his gold ornaments
and ostrich feather? Shouldn't you like to take him back with us to the
manor?"

"Yes--no--I don't know," said Dean. "Here, come on. They have all gone
now, and there's Dan waving his hand for us to come to breakfast."

"That's right," said Mark thoughtfully. "We understand; you needn't
shout. I say, Dean, we might as well have brought the old gong out of
the hall. It would have done for dinner-bell if we had hung it outside
the waggon, and been splendid to have scared the lions away."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

BUILDING THE ZAREBA.

"Compasses are fine things," said Mark. "See, here we are with that
little needle ready to spin one way or the other till it stands still
without being shaken, and here it shows us exactly how we have been
travelling along first to the south, then due west, and now here we are
steadily going on to the north-west."

"That's all very well at sea," said Dean, "but here we are on land.
Suppose that compass isn't correct?"

"There's a sceptic!" cried Mark. "Why, doesn't the sun rising and
setting prove it to be all right? The needle always is correct unless
it's near iron."

"Or there is some natural cause to produce a variation," said the
doctor, who was listening to the boys' remarks upon the pocket compass
which he always carried. "We needn't doubt it here."

"Then according to what you are showing, sir, in the fourteen days'
since those pigmies left us--"

"No, we left them," said Dean.

"That's not correct," said Mark. "We stood still and saw them go into
the forest, so they must have left us."