"Within half an hour the two friends who had just left school
entered a room which was part library, part museum, armoury, dining-
room, and cabin, so crammed it was.

"This is my friend Venning, Mr. Hume."

"Glad to see you, Venning. Sit down anywhere."

Compton sat down between the horns of a bleached buffalo skull, but
Venning stood like one in a trance. His hand had been swallowed up
by a huge palm and thick iron-like fingers, and he was staring down
on a pair of the broadest shoulders he had seen, with an arching
chest to match. This was the pigmy he had imagined--this man with
the shoulders of a giant and the chest of a Hercules. Then his eyes
ranged over the walls, gradually recovering their animation.

"Know 'em," said Mr. Hume, waving a bronzed hand towards the wall.

"I think so, sir."

"Just reel off the names."

Venning reeled off the names of a score or more of animals without
hesitation, and Mr. Hume looked pleased.

"There are some men," he said, "who come in here and talk over me
and round me and under me about fur and feather, and they can't tell
a bighorn from a koodoo by the horns on the wall. Now, my friend,
you knew those over there in the corner were the horns of a koodoo,