Squat understood one word in ten, but he managed to reply.  “This is nonsense-talk,” said he, gravely.  “The life is no bigger in that than in the murcat you shot last shoot.”

“No more it is,” said Staines.  “I am a fool.  It is come to this, then; Kafirs teach us theology, and Hottentots morality.  I bow to my intellectual superior.  I’ll shoot the eland.”  He raised his rifle again.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” murmured the Hottentot, in a sweet voice scarcely audible, yet so keen in its entreaty, that Staines turned hastily round to look at him.  His face was ashy, his teeth chattering, his limbs shaking.  Before Staines could ask him what was the matter, he pointed through an aperture of the acacias into the wood hard by the elands.  Staines looked, and saw what seemed to him like a very long dog, or some such animal, crawling from tree to tree.  He did not at all share the terror of his companion, nor understand it.  But a terrible explanation followed.  This creature, having got to the skirt of the wood, expanded, by some strange magic, to an incredible size, and sprang into the open, with a growl, a mighty lion; he seemed to ricochet from the ground, so immense was his second bound, that carried him to the eland, and he struck her one blow on the head with his terrible paw, and felled her as if with a thunderbolt:  down went her body, with all the legs doubled, and her poor head turned over, and the nose kissed the ground.  The lion stood motionless.  Presently the eland, who was not dead, but stunned, began to recover and struggle feebly up.  Then the lion sprang on her with a roar, and rolled her over, and with two tremendous bites and a shake, tore her entrails out and laid her dying.  He sat composedly down, and contemplated her last convulsions, without touching her again.

At this roar, though not loud, the horse, though he had never heard or seen a lion, trembled, and pulled at his halter.

Blacky crept into the water; and Staines was struck with such an awe as he had never felt.  Nevertheless, the king of beasts being at a distance, and occupied, and Staines a brave man, and out of sight, he kept his ground and watched, and by those means saw a sight never to be forgotten.  The lion rose up, and stood in the sun incredibly beautiful as well as terrible.  He was not the mangy hue of the caged lion, but a skin tawny, golden, glossy as a race-horse, and of exquisite tint that shone like pure gold in the sun; his eye a lustrous jewel of richest hue, and his mane sublime.  He looked towards the wood, and uttered a full roar.  This was so tremendous that the horse shook all over as if in an ague, and began to lather.  Staines recoiled, and his flesh crept, and the Hottentot went under water, and did not emerge for ever so long.

After a pause, the lion roared again, and all the beasts and birds of prey seemed to know the meaning of that terrible roar.  Till then the place had been a solitude, but now it began to fill in the strangest way, as if the lord of the forest could call all his subjects together with a trumpet roar:  first came two lion cubs, to whom, in fact, the roar had been addressed.  The lion rubbed himself several times against the eland, but did not eat a morsel, and the cubs went in and feasted on the prey.  The lion politely and paternally drew back, and watched the young people enjoying themselves.