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The Tale of Three Lions by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
page 15 of 39 (38%)
"'Lions, my boy,' I said; 'they are hunting down by the river there;
but I don't think that you need make yourself uneasy. We have been
here three nights now, and if they were going to pay us a visit I
think that they would have done so before this. However, we will make
up the fire.'

"'Here, Pharaoh, do you and Jim-Jim get some more wood before we go to
sleep, else the cats will be purring round you before morning.'

"Pharaoh, a great brawny Swazi, who had been working for me at
Pilgrims' Rest, laughed, rose, and stretched himself, then calling to
Jim-Jim to bring the axe and a reim, started off in the moonlight
towards a clump of sugar-bush where we cut our fuel from some dead
trees. He was a fine fellow in his way, was Pharaoh, and I think that
he had been named Pharaoh because he had an Egyptian cast of
countenance and a royal sort of swagger about him. But his way was a
somewhat peculiar way, on account of the uncertainty of his temper,
and very few people could get on with him; also if he could find
liquor he would drink like a fish, and when he drank he became
shockingly bloodthirsty. These were his bad points; his good ones were
that, like most people of the Zulu blood, he became exceedingly
attached if he took to you at all; he was a hard-working and
intelligent man, and about as dare-devil and plucky a fellow at a
pinch as I have ever had to do with. He was about five-and-thirty
years of age or so, but not a 'keshla' or ringed man. I believe that
he had got into trouble in some way in Swaziland, and the authorities
of his tribe would not allow him to assume the ring, and that is why
he came to work at the gold-fields. The other man, or rather lad, Jim-
Jim, was a Mapoch Kaffir, or Knobnose, and even in the light of
subsequent events I fear I cannot speak very well of him. He was an
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