Nobody got much sleep that night, although the porters were perfectly indifferent to the risk of snoozing on the watch.  Kazimoto produced a thing called a kiboko—­a whip of hippopotamus-hide a yard and a half long, and with the aid of that and Will’s good humor we constituted a yelling brigade, whose business was to make the welkin ring with godless noises whenever a lion came close enough to be dangerous.

I made up a signal party of all our personal boys with our lanterns, swinging them in frantic patterns in the darkness in a way to terrify the very night itself.  Fred played concertina nearly all night long, and when dawn came, though there were tracks of lions all about the camp we were only tired and sleepy.  Nobody was missing; nobody killed.

We never again took lions so seriously, although we always built fires about the camp in lion country when that was possible.  Partly by dint of carelessness that brought no ill results, and partly from observation we learned that where game is plentiful lions are more curious than dangerous, and that unless something should happen to enrage them, or the game has gone away and they are hungry, they are likely to let well alone.

If there are dogs in camp—­and we bought three terrier pups that morning from a settler at Kikuyu—­leopards are likely to be more troublesome than lions.  The leopards seemed to yearn for dog-meat much as Brown of Lumbwa yearned for whisky.

The journey to Lumbwa is one of the pleasantest I remember.  We took Brown’s supply of whisky from him, locked up with our own, sent him ahead in the hammock, and let him as work as guide by promises of whisky for supper if he did his duty, and threats of mere cold water if he failed.

“But water rots my stomach!” he objected.

“Lead on, then!” was the invariable, remorseless answer.  So Brown led until we reached Naivasha with its strange lake full of hippo at an elevation so great that the mornings are frosty (and that within sight of the line) there was never a day that we were once out of sight of game from dawn to dark.  When we awoke the morning mist would scatter slowly and betray sleepy herds of antelope, that would rise leisurely, stand staring at us, suddenly become suspicious, and then gallop off until the whole plain was a panorama of wheeling herds, reminding one of the cavalry maneuvers at Aldershot when the Guards regiments were pitted against the regular cavalry—­all riding and no wits.

Although we had to shoot enough meat for ourselves and men, we never once took advantage of those surprise parties in the early morning, preferring to stalk warier game at the end of a long march.  The rains were a thing of the past, and we seldom troubled to pitch tents but slept under the stars with a sensation that the universe was one vast place of peace.