We got out of the boat and ran to the buck, which was shot through the
spine and stone dead. It took us a quarter of an hour or more to clean
it and cut off as much of the best meat as we could carry, and,
having packed this away, we had barely light enough to row up into the
lagoon-like space, into which, there being a hollow in the swamp, the
river here expanded. Just as the light vanished we cast anchor about
thirty fathoms from the edge of the lake. We did not dare to go ashore,
not knowing if we should find dry ground to camp on, and greatly fearing
the poisonous exhalations from the marsh, from which we thought we
should be freer on the water. So we lighted a lantern, and made our
evening meal off another potted tongue in the best fashion that we
could, and then prepared to go to sleep, only, however, to find that
sleep was impossible. For, whether they were attracted by the lantern,
or by the unaccustomed smell of a white man for which they had been
waiting for the last thousand years or so, I know not; but certainly we
were presently attacked by tens of thousands of the most blood-thirsty,
pertinacious, and huge mosquitoes that I ever saw or read of. In clouds
they came, and pinged and buzzed and bit till we were nearly mad.
Tobacco smoke only seemed to stir them into a merrier and more active
life, till at length we were driven to covering ourselves with blankets,
head and all, and sitting to slowly stew and continually scratch and
swear beneath them. And as we sat, suddenly rolling out like thunder
through the silence came the deep roar of a lion, and then of a second
lion, moving among the reeds within sixty yards of us.

"I say," said Leo, sticking his head out from under his blanket, "lucky
we ain't on the bank, eh, Avuncular?" (Leo sometimes addressed me in
this disrespectful way.) "Curse it! a mosquito has bitten me on the
nose," and the head vanished again.