all in vain. It had been ten in the morning when he left the camp, and
at sunset he was still seeking it, without food, unarmed save for his
useless, unloaded gun.

The situation would have been ludicrous had it been less serious; but
Mr. Oswell, feeling sure that his friends would seek him at nightfall,
followed the track of beasts to a pool of water, and determined to wait
there until he should hear some sound of them. The fuel about was
scanty, but he collected what he could until the short twilight of the
tropics darkened into night, and then, with the idea of saving firewood,
climbed a tree. But now the cold became intense. The heat of the day had
been followed by sharp frost, and the unfortunate sportsman, with no
extra covering, became so numb that he decided to descend from his perch
and light his fire. He had clambered down to the lowest bough, and was
about to drop to the ground, when something stirred below him. A moving
body parted the bushes, and he heard at his feet an unmistakable sound,
the pant of a questing lion. Had he dropped a moment sooner, he would
have fallen right on to the top of the beast. We need hardly say that he
returned very swiftly to his upper story, and, crouching there, could
hear distinctly two lions, hunting in a circle round about the water,
passing and saluting each other, like sentinels on their beat.

It was a trying situation, certainly, to have to sit, clinging with
frozen fingers to the branches, only a few feet above the heads of the
other 'mighty hunters,' who seemed to have resumed, in the night hours,
their rule of the land he had dared to dispute with them.

But the horror of darkness came to an end at last. The moon rose,
silvering the pool and showing the wide stretch of bush, and, at the
same moment, sounded, still far away, the report of guns, a volley of
firing which could only come from his own party. The sound must have
been like new life to the chilled, lonely man, nerving him to a
desperate effort to join those who were seeking for him. Those guns were
as the voices of his friends, and he would sooner risk everything in an
attempt to reach them than die of cold within hearing of their summons.
He waited until the two lions were, as he judged, at the furthest point
of their round, then he dropped noiselessly to the ground. The firing
continued at intervals, and he made for it through the bush, running,
pausing, listening, with breath held, for the rustle or move