liable to this trouble, and being rather bad just now, it makes me
limp more than ever. There must be some poison in a lion's teeth,
otherwise how is it that when your wounds are healed they break out
again, generally, mark you, at the same time of year that you got your
mauling? It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or
more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should
chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the
thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and
don't like that. This is by the way.

Third reason: Because I want my boy Harry, who is over there at the
hospital in London studying to become a doctor, to have something to
amuse him and keep him out of mischief for a week or so. Hospital work
must sometimes pall and grow rather dull, for even of cutting up dead
bodies there may come satiety, and as this history will not be dull,
whatever else it may be, it will put a little life into things for a
day or two while Harry is reading of our adventures.

Fourth reason and last: Because I am going to tell the strangest story
that I remember. It may seem a queer thing to say, especially
considering that there is no woman in it--except Foulata. Stop,
though! there is Gagaoola, if she was a woman, and not a fiend. But
she was a hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don't
count her. At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a
/petticoat/ in the whole history.

Well, I had better come to the yoke. It is a stiff place, and I feel
as though I were bogged up to the axle. But, "/sutjes, sutjes/," as
the Boers say--I am sure I don't know how they spell it--softly does
it. A strong team will come through at last, that is, if they are not