“Meanwhile Mashune employed himself in dragging together some dead boughs from the mimosa trees to make a sort of ‘skerm,’ or shelter for us to sleep in, about forty yards from the edge of the pool of water.  We had been greatly troubled with lions in the course of our long tramp, and only on the previous night have very nearly been attacked by them, which made me nervous, especially in my weak state.  Just as we had finished the skerm, or rather something which did duty for one, Mashune and I heard a shot apparently fired about a mile away.

“‘Hark to it!’ sung out Mashune in Zulu, more, I fancy, by way of keeping his spirits up than for any other reason—­for he was a sort of black Mark Tapley, and very cheerful under difficulties.  ’Hark to the wonderful sound with which the “Maboona” (the Boers) shook our fathers to the ground at the Battle of the Blood River.  We are hungry now, my father; our stomachs are small and withered up like a dried ox’s paunch, but they will soon be full of good meat.  Hans is a Hottentot, and an “umfagozan,” that is, a low fellow, but he shoots straight—­ah! he certainly shoots straight.  Be of a good heart, my father, there will soon be meat upon the fire, and we shall rise up men.’

“And so he went on talking nonsense till I told him to stop, because he made my head ache with his empty words.

“Shortly after we heard the shot the sun sank in his red splendour, and there fell upon earth and sky the great hush of the African wilderness.  The lions were not up as yet, they would probably wait for the moon, and the birds and beasts were all at rest.  I cannot describe the intensity of the quiet of the night:  to me in my weak state, and fretting as I was over the non-return of the Hottentot Hans, it seemed almost ominous—­as though Nature were brooding over some tragedy which was being enacted in her sight.

“It was quiet—­quiet as death, and lonely as the grave.

“‘Mashune,’ I said at last, ‘where is Hans? my heart is heavy for him.’

“’Nay, my father, I know not; mayhap he is weary, and sleeps, or mayhap he has lost his way.’

“‘Mashune, art thou a boy to talk folly to me?’ I answered.  ’Tell me, in all the years thou hast hunted by my side, didst thou ever know a Hottentot to lose his path or to sleep upon the way to camp?’

“‘Nay, Macumazahn’ (that, ladies, is my native name, and means the man who ‘gets up by night,’ or who ’is always awake’), ’I know not where he is.’

“But though we talked thus, we neither of us liked to hint at what was in both our minds, namely, that misfortunate had overtaken the poor Hottentot.

“‘Mashune,’ I said at last, ’go down to the water and bring me of those green herbs that grow there.  I am hungered, and must eat something.’

“’Nay, my father; surely the ghosts are there; they come out of the water at night, and sit upon the banks to dry themselves.  An Isanusi[*] told it me.’