He sat with his back to the reserve heap of reeds, and waited with his rifle over his knees for the signal to fire his first pile.  There was as yet no clear meaning in those mysterious whisperings.  What he listened for was a sound that he could interpret, and it came very soon in the grunt of a leopard, harsh and grating.  The reeds rustled just before him, and then there came a sound, regular and strange—­a thump and a swish, then a thump and a swish.  Creeping forward, he put a match to the heap, then went back; and as the red flame crackled through the hard shining stems, he saw a dark form crouching beyond, the green eyes blinking in the reflection, and the tufted tail nervously jerking from side to side.  It was that made the strange noise.  As the flame grew, the leopard sprang up and turned away, stopping for a long stare over its shoulder.

Light fragments from the burning pile floated high up like fire-flies, and far over the white sea of leaves shone the reflection.  Others saw it from the far outer edge, and through the night came the report of a gun, and then faintly the echo of a “coo-ee.”  He shouted back hoarsely, and though he knew his friends could not possibly force the way to him through that barrier, impenetrable except by the devious game-tracks, he was greatly cheered.

His mind was taken off his loneliness for a time, and he suddenly found that he was fearfully hungry.  So with his handy knife he stripped the skin from a hind leg of the antelope, cut off a fine steak, and scraping out a layer of glowing embers, placed the meat on.  With the cooking and eating of his supper the time went cheerfully; but meantime the flame had died out, and something alighted with a thud just behind.  He whipped round, but could see nothing, and moved to the fire to kick some of the live coals to the next heap.  In that instant the antelope was seized and carried off in a couple of bounds just inside the reeds, for he heard plainly the tearing of the flesh, the snarls, the growling, and the crunching of bones.  He crouched near the fire, for it was not pleasant to think of that stealthy approach and that bold foray, and wondered whether the buck would satisfy the pair of fierce creatures.  The fire flared up, crackled fiercely, sending up, as before, its fiery messengers into the air, then gradually died down to a glowing heap; and the leopards were still at their meal, purring now, a monstrous cat-like purr.  There was comfort in it, however, for it seemed to him to tell of hunger satisfied, and by-and-by they indeed went off, grunting to each other.  Then there came a long spell of silence.  He gathered the unburnt fragments that fringed the two heaps of embers and piled them on one of the heaps.  They blazed up, and by the light he rearranged the other stacks of fuel.  He realized that he could easily be struck down by a leopard if he ventured away from a fire, and he hit on the idea of building his fires in the shape