The Kafir cabins they entered were caves, lighted only by the door, but deliciously cool, and quite clean; the floors of puddled clay or ants’ nests, and very clean.  On entering these cool retreats, the flies that had tormented them shirked the cool grot, and buzzed off to the nearest farm to batten on congenial foulness.  On the fat, round, glossy babies, not a speck of dirt, whereas the little Boers were cakes thereof.  The Kafir would meet them at the door, his clean black face all smiles and welcome.  The women and grown girls would fling a spotless handkerchief over their shoulders in a moment, and display their snowy teeth, in unaffected joy at sight of an Englishman.

At one of these huts, one evening, they met with something St. Paul ranks above cleanliness even, viz., Christianity.  A neighboring lion had just eaten a Hottentot faute de mieux; and these good Kafirs wanted the Europeans not to go on at night and be eaten for dessert.  But they could not speak a word of English, and pantomimic expression exists in theory alone.  In vain the women held our travellers by the coat-tails, and pointed to a distant wood.  In vain Kafir pere went on all-fours and growled sore.  But at last a savage youth ran to the kitchen—­for they never cook in the house—­and came back with a brand, and sketched, on the wall of the hut, a lion with a mane down to the ground, and a saucer eye, not loving.  The creature’s paw rested on a hat and coat and another fragment or two of a European.  The rest was fore-shortened, or else eaten.

The picture completed, the females looked, approved, and raised a dismal howl.

“A lion on the road,” said Christopher gravely.

Then the undaunted Falcon seized the charcoal, and drew an Englishman in a theatrical attitude, left foot well forward, firing a gun, and a lion rolling head over heels like a buck rabbit, and blood squirting out of a hole in his perforated carcass.

The savages saw, and exulted.  They were so off their guard as to confound representation with fact; they danced round the white warrior, and launched him to victory.

“Aha!” said Falcon, “I took the shine out of their lion, didn’t I?”

“You did:  and once there was a sculptor who showed a lion his marble group, a man trampling a lion, extracting his tongue, and so on; but report says it did not convince the lion.”

“Why, no; a lion is not an ass.  But, for your comfort, there are no lions in this part of the world.  They are myths.  There were lions in Africa.  But now they are all at the Zoo.  And I wish I was there too.”

“In what character—­of a discontented animal—­with every blessing?  They would not take you in; too common in England.  Hallo! this is something new.  What lots of bushes!  We should not have much chance with a lion here.”

“There are no lions:  it is not the Zoo,” said Falcon; but he spurred on faster.