him and assistance with no revolver or other weapon at
hand. That's hazard enough for me and it took the best work I could do
with my brassey to get around it."

"You always were strong at a brassey lie," said Ananias.

"Thank you," said Mr. Munchausen. "There are few lies I can't get
around. But on this morning I was playing for the Mid-African
Championship. I'd been getting along splendidly. My record for fifteen
holes was about seven hundred and eighty-three strokes, and I was
flattering myself that I was about to turn in the best card that had
ever been seen in a medal play contest in all Africa. My drive from
the sixteenth tee was a simple beauty. I thought the ball would never
stop, I hit it such a tremendous whack. It had a flight of three
hundred and eighty-two yards and a roll of one hundred and twenty
more, and when it finally stopped it turned up in a mighty good lie on
a natural tee, which the wind had swirled up. Calling to the monkey
who acted as my caddy--we used monkeys for caddies always in Africa,
and they were a great success because they don't talk and they use
their tails as a sort of extra hand,--I got out my brassey for the
second stroke, took my stance on the hardened sand, swung my club
back, fixed my eye on the ball and was just about to carry through,
when I heard a sound which sent my heart into my boots, my caddy
galloping back to the club house, and set my teeth chattering like a
pair of castanets. It was unmistakable, that sound. When a hungry lion
roars you know precisely what it is the moment you hear it, especially
if you have heard it before. It doesn't sound a bit like the miauing
of a cat; nor is it suggestive of the rumble of artillery in an
adjacent street. There is no mistaking it for distant thunder, as some
writers would have you believe. It has none of the gently mournful
quality that characterises the soughing of the wind through the
leafless branches of the autumnal forest, to which a poet might liken
it; it is just a plain lion-roaring and nothing else, and when you
hear it you know it. The man who mistakes it for distant thunder might
just as well be struck by lightning there and then for all the chance
he has to get away from it ultimately. The poet who confounds it with
the gentle soughing breeze never lives to tell about it. He gets
himself eaten up for his foolishness. It doesn't require a Daniel come
to judgment to recognise a lion's roar on sight.

"I should have