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.
Shortly after this the moon came up, and notwithstanding every variety
of roar that echoed over the water to us from the lions on the banks, we
began, thinking ourselves perfectly secure, to gradually doze off.
I do not quite know what it was that made me poke my head out of the
friendly shelter of the blanket, perhaps because I found that the
mosquitoes were biting right through it. Anyhow, as I did so I heard Job
whisper, in a frightened voice--
"Oh, my stars, look there!"
Instantly we all of us looked, and this was what we saw in the
moonlight. Near the shore were two wide and ever-widening circles of
concentric rings rippling away across the surface of the water, and in
the heart and centre of the circles were two dark moving objects.
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