boy," he said; "I must confess to too great a dislike to the
serpent race to care to carry about their skins. Besides, if we are
going on like this, killing a lion a day, we shall have only room for
the skins of our big game. Let's leave the creature here."

They climbed up out of the ravine, and after a couple of hours' more
walking, full of interest if not of incident, they went slowly back,
glad to get in the shade of the trees beneath which the waggon was
halted, and finding everything right.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

HOW THE LITTLE GINTLEMEN INTERFERED WID DINNY.

A few days were very pleasantly spent here collecting, for Mr Rogers
was an enthusiastic naturalist. Birds of brilliant feathering were
shot, skinned, preserved with arsenical paste, filled with cotton wool,
and laid to dry with their heads and shoulders thrust into paper cones,
after which they were transferred to a box which had to be zealously
watched to keep out the ants. Certainly scores of these were killed
through eating the poison smeared upon the skins, but that was little
satisfaction if they had first destroyed some delicate bird.

Butterflies, too, and beetles were obtained in great numbers, being
carefully killed, and pinned out in boxes lined with camphored cork.
These insects the two Zulu boys soon learned to capture with the
greatest ease, and after a little teaching they would bring in a
handsome butterfly or moth, without crushing and disfiguring it first so
that it was useless for preservation.

Bok or antelope of various kinds were plentiful enough to make the party
sure of plenty of food; and both Dick and Jack were getting so skilful
with the rifle that they could be depended upon to bring down a koodoo
or springbok at four or five hundred paces.

The kraal had been strengthened, so that they felt no fear of a lion
getting through; but fires were kept up every night, wood being
plentiful, and the bright glow seemed to give confidence to the
occupants of the camp, as well as to the horses and oxen. Watch was
kept too, but though lions were sometimes heard at a distance they did
not molest the travellers, and but for the stern suggestions of the
General they would have grown careless in the extreme.

For experience and skill in the use of fire-arms made Dick and Jack more
confident. They had looked upon a lion as a monster of such prowess,
and of so dangerous a character, that they were quite surprised at the
ease with whic