ern English boat--seeming to jar upon and look out of tone with that
measureless desolation; and in front of us the noble buck limned out
upon a background of ruddy sky.

_Bang!_ Away he goes with a mighty bound. Leo has missed him. _Bang!_
right under him again. Now for a shot. I must have one, though he is
going like an arrow, and a hundred yards away and more. By Jove! over
and over and over! "Well, I think I've wiped your eye there, Master
Leo," I say, struggling against the ungenerous exultation that in such
a supreme moment of one's existence will rise in the best-mannered
sportsman's breast.

"Confound you, yes," growled Leo; and then, with that quick smile that
is one of his charms lighting up his handsome face like a ray of light,
"I beg your pardon, old fellow. I congratulate you; it was a lovely
shot, and mine were vile."

We got out of the boat and ran to the buck, which was shot through the
spine and stone dead. It took us a quarter of an hour or more to clean
it and cut off as much of the best meat as we could carry, and,
having packed this away, we had barely light enough to row up into the
lagoon-like space, into which, there being a hollow in the swamp, the
river here expanded. Just as the light vanished we cast anchor about
thirty fathoms from the edge of the lake. We did not dare to go ashore,
not knowing if we should find dry ground to camp on, and greatly fearing
the poisonous exhalations from the marsh, from which we thought we
should be freer on the water. So we lighted a lantern, and made our
evening meal off another potted tongue in the best fashion that we
could, and then prepared to go to sleep, only, however, to find that
sleep was impossible. For, whether they were attracted by the lantern,
or by the unaccustomed smell of a white man for which they had been
waiting for the last thousand years or so, I know not; but certainly we
were presently attacked by tens of thousands of the most blood-thirsty,
pertinacious, and huge mosquitoes that I ever saw or read of. In clouds
they came, and pinged and buzzed and bit till we were nearly mad.
Tobacco smoke only seemed to stir them into a merrier and more active
life, till at length we were driven to covering ourselves with blankets,
head and all, and sitting to slowly stew and continually scratch and
swear beneath them. And as we sat, suddenly rolling out like thunder
through the silence came the deep roar of a lion, and then of a second
lion, mov