It was my first experience of Will with hysteria, for it amounted to that.  I remembered that to cure a bevy of school-girls of it one should rap out something sharply, with a cane if need be.  Yet Will was not like a school-girl, and his hysteria took the pseudo-manly form of refusal to retreat.  I yearned for Fred’s camp-fires, and Fred’s laugh, hot supper, or breakfast, or whatever the meal would be, and blankets.  Will, with a ruthless murderer stalking him in the dark, yearned only for self-contentment.  All at once I saw the thing to do, and thrust my rifle in his hands.

“Take it,” I said.  “Hunt Schillingschen all night if you want to.  I’m going back to tell Fred I’ve lost my rifle, and was afraid to face you for fear you’d laugh at me.  Go on—­take it!  No, you’ve got to take it!”

I let the rifle fall at his feet, and he was forced to pick it up.  By that time I was on my way, and he had to hurry if he hoped to catch me.  I kept him hurrying—­cursing, and calling out to wait.  And so, hours later, we arrived in sight of Fred’s fires and answered his cheery challenge: 

“Halt there, or I’ll shoot your bally head off!”

Lions had kept him busy making the boys pile thornwood on the fires.  He had shot two—­one inside the enclosure, where the brute had jumped in a vain effort to reach the frantic donkeys.  We stumbled over the carcass of the other as we made our way toward the gate-gap, and dragged it in ignominiously by the tail (not such an easy task as the uninitiated might imagine.)

Once within the enclosure I left Will to tell Fred his story as best suited him, Fred roaring with laughter as he watched Will’s rueful face, yet turning suddenly on Brown to curse him like a criminal for laughing, too!

“Go and fetch that Mauser of yours, Brown, and give it to Mr. Yerkes in place of what he’s lost!  Hurry, please!”

It was touch and go whether Brown would obey.  But he happened to be sober, and realized that he had committed tho unpermissible offense.  Fred might laugh at Will all he chose; so might I; either of us might laugh Fred out of countenance; or they might howl derisively at me.  But Brown, camp-fellow though he was, and not bad fellow though he was, was not of our inner-guard.  He might laugh with, never at, especially when catastrophe brought inner feelings to the surface.

“Take the shot-gun if you care to,” Fred told him, as he passed Will the rifle.  “I’ll unlock the chop-box presently, and let you have some whisky!”

This last was the cruellest cut, but it did Brown good.  When Fred kept his promise and produced a whole bottle from the locked-up store Brown refused to touch it, instead insulting him like a good man, cursing him—­whisky, whiskers, whims and all, using language that Fred good-naturedly assured him was very unladylike.