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How a Traveller Saved His Life
a STORY is told of traveller in deavoring to drive his master's cattle into South Africa. In a pool of water, enclosed between two crossing a wide ridges of rock, espied a huge Lion crouchplain he saw at a ing in the midst of the pool. Terrified at short distance be- the unexpected sight of such a beast, hind him a lion which seemed to have its eyes fixed upon slowly following him, he instantly took to his heels. In him. When the doing this, he had presence of mind quickened enough to run through the herd, conclud- One of the Namaaqua Hottentots, enman his pace the lion did likewise, and it was ing that, if the Lion should pursue, he evident to the traveller that the lion was would seize upon the first beast that preonly awaiting an opportunity to spring sented itself. In this, however, he was upon him. mistaken. The Lion broke through the In much fear the anxious man hurried herd in pursuit of the Hottentot, who, on on, until he reached a high cliff, below turning round, and perceiving that the which was a deep ravine. Here he deter- monster had singled him out, breathless mined to live or die, so creeping down and half dead with fear, scrambled up into a crevice in the rock, he quietly con- one of the tree-aloes, in the trunk of which cealed himself, having previously placed had luckily been cut a few steps, the more his hat and coat upon his staff, which he readily to come at some birds'-nests that stuck near the edge of the precipice, hop- the branches contained. At the same ing to deceive the wild beast, who might moment the Lion made a spring at him, mistake the effigy for himself. but missing his aim, the animal fell upon In due course, the Lion came stealthily the ground. In surly silence he walked along, and imagining that the hat and round the tree, casting at times a dreadcoat were the real man, he made a sudden ful look towards the poor Hottentot. spring at them with such force that he Having remained silent and motionless bounded over the precipice and was for a great length of time, the man vendashed to pieces amongst the rocks tured to peep through the leaves, hoping below. that the Lion had departed, when, to his We need hardly add that the traveller astonishment and terror, his eyes met rejoiced in the result of his device, and those of the animal, which, as the man often related his narrow escape from the afterwards expressed himself, "flashed jaws of the Lion. fire at him." In short, the Lion laid him- (204)
