e
began to stroke her tufts of hair.

"You are not afraid, now?"

"No."

"My little Mzimu! My Mzimu! You see what Africa is."

"Yes, but you will kill every ugly beast?"

"I will."

Both again began to examine closely the rapacious beast. Stas, desiring
to preserve its skin as a trophy ordered Kali to strip it off, but the
latter from fear that another wobo might creep out of the ravine begged
him not to leave him alone, and to the question whether he feared a
wobo more than a lion, said:

"A lion roars at night and does not leap over stockades, but a wobo in
the white day can leap over a stockade and kill a great many negroes in
the middle of the village, and after that he seizes one of them and
eats him. Against a wobo a spear is no protection, nor a bow, only
charms, for a wobo cannot be killed."

"Nonsense," said Stas, "look at this one; is he not well slain?"

"The white master kills wobo; the black man cannot kill him," Kali
replied.

It ended in this, that the gigantic cat was tied by a rope to the horse
and the horse dragged him to the camp. Stas, however, did not succeed
in preserving his hide, for the King, who evidently surmised that the
wobo wanted to carry off his little lady, fell into such a frenzy of
rage that even Stas' orders were unable to restrain him. Seizing the
slain beast with his trunk he tossed it twice into the air; after which
he began to strike it against a tree and in the end trampled upon it
with his legs and changed it into a shapeless, jelly-like mass. Stas
succeeded in saving the jaws, which with the remnants of the head he
placed on an ant-column on the road, and the ants cleaned the bones in
the course of an hour so thoroughly that not an atom of flesh or blood
remained.

XIX

Four days later Stas stopped for a longer rest on a hill somewhat
similar to Mount Linde, but smaller and narrower. That same night Saba
after a hard battle killed a big male baboon, whom he attacked at a
time when the baboon was playing with the remnants of a kite, the
second in order of those which they had sent before starting for the
ocean. Stas and Nell, taking advantage of the stay, determined to glue
new ones continually, but to fly them only when the monsoon blew from
the west to the east. Stas placed great reliance upon this, that even
if but one of them should fall into European or Arabian hands it would
undoubtedly attract extraordinary attention and would cause an
expedition to