"It was a lovely night. Harry and I sat to the windward of the fire,
where the two Kaffirs were busily employed in cooking some impala
steaks off a buck which Harry, to his great joy, had shot that
morning, and were as perfectly contented with ourselves and the world
at large as two people could possibly be. The night was beautiful, and
it would require somebody with more words on the tip of his tongue
than I have to describe properly the chastened majesty of those
moonlit wilds. Away for ever and for ever, away to the mysterious
north, rolled the great bush ocean over which the silence brooded.
There beneath us a mile or more to the right ran the wide Oliphant,
and mirror-like flashed back the moon, whose silver spears were
shivered on its breast, and then tossed in twisted lines of light far
and wide about the mountains and the plain. Down upon the river-banks
grew great timber-trees that through the stillness pointed solemnly to
Heaven, and the beauty of the night lay upon them like a cloud.
Everywhere was silence--silence in the starred depths, silence on the
bosom of the sleeping earth. Now, if ever, great thoughts might rise
in a man's mind, and for a space he might forget his littleness in the
sense that he partook of the pure immensity about him.

"'Hark! what was that?'

"From far away down by the river there comes a mighty rolling sound,
then another, and another. It is the lion seeking his meat.

"I saw Harry shiver and turn a little pale. He was a plucky boy
enough, but the roar of a lion heard for the first time in the solemn
bush veldt at night is apt to shake the nerves of any lad.