Soon we learned what had happened.  It seemed that hungry lions, two or three of them, had broken through the palm-leaf roof of the hut of one of the sheik’s wives, she whose remains were stretched upon the door, and, in addition to killing her, had actually carried off his son.  Now he came to implore us white men who had guns to revenge him on the lions, which otherwise, having once tasted human flesh, would destroy many more of his people.

Through an interpreter who knew Arabic, for not even Higgs could understand the peculiar Zeu dialect, he explained in excited and incoherent words that the beasts lay up among the sand-hills not very far away, where some thick reeds grew around a little spring of water.  Would we not come out and kill them and earn the blessing of the Zeus?

Now I said nothing, for the simple reason that, having such big matters on hand, although I was always fond of sport, I did not wish any of us to be led off after these lions.  There is a time to hunt and a time to cease from hunting, and it seemed to me, except for the purposes of food, that this journey of ours was the latter.  However, as I expected, Oliver Orme literally leaped at the idea.  So did Higgs, who of late had been practising with a rifle and began to fancy himself a shot.  He exclaimed loudly that nothing would give him greater pleasure, especially as he was sure that lions were in fact cowardly and overrated beasts.

From that moment I foreboded disaster in my heart.  Still, I said I would come too, partly because I had not shot a lion for many a day and had a score to settle with those beasts which, it may be remembered, nearly killed me on the Mountain of Mur, and partly because, knowing the desert and also the Zeu people much better than either the Professor or Orme, I thought that I might possibly be of service.

So we fetched our rifles and cartridges, to which by an afterthought we added two large water-bottles, and ate a hearty breakfast.  As we were preparing to start, Shadrach, the leader of the Abati camel-drivers, that man with the scarred face who was nicknamed the Cat, came up to me and asked me whither we were going.  I told him, whereon he said: 

“What have you to do with these savages and their troubles, lords?  If a few of them are killed it is no matter, but as you should know, O Doctor, if you wish to hunt lions there are plenty in that land whither you travel, seeing that the lion is the fetish of the Fung and therefore never killed.  But the desert about Zeu is dangerous and harm may come to you.”

“Then accompany us,” broke in the Professor, between whom and Shadrach there was no love lost, “for, of course, with you we should be quite safe.”

“Not so,” he replied, “I and my people rest; only madmen would go to hunt worthless wild beasts when they might rest.  Have we not enough of the desert and its dangers as it is?  If you knew all that I do of lions you would leave them alone.”