clutching a man by the throat. "Oh! have no fear, Master, I can break
him like a stick, and afterwards we will talk the matter over among
the dead, for I shall swallow my tongue and die also. It is a good
trick, Master, which I wish you would learn."

Then he took my hand and kissed it and we entered the reeds, I, who
was a hunter, feeling more happy than I had done since we set foot in
the East.

Yet the quest was desperate for the reeds were tall and often I could
not see more than a bow's length in front of me. Presently, however,
we found a path made perchance by game coming down to drink, or by
crocodiles coming up to sleep, and followed it, I with an arrow on my
string and Bes with the throwing spear in his right hand and the
stabbing spear in his left, half a pace ahead of me. On we crept, Bes
drawing in the air through his great nostrils as a hound might do,
till suddenly he stopped and sniffed towards the north.

"I smell lion near," he whispered, searching among the reed stems with
his eyes. "I see lion," he whispered again, and pointed, but I could
see nothing save the stems of the reeds.

"Rouse him," I whispered back, "and I will shoot as he bounds."

Then Bes poised the spear, shook it till it quivered, and threw. There
was a roar and a lioness appeared with the spear fast in her flank. I
loosed the arrow but it cut into the thick reeds and stuck there.

"Forward!" whispered Bes, "for where woman is, there look for man. The
lion will be near."