Slices of liver, well peppered with cayenne and salt, were grilling on the gridiron, and we were preparing to dine, when a terrific roar within a hundred and fifty yards informed us that a lion was also thinking of dinner.

A confusion of tremendous roars proceeding from several lions followed the first round, and my aggageers quietly remarked, "There is no danger for the horses tonight; the lions have found your wounded buffalo!" Such a magnificent chorus of bass voices I had never heard.

The jungle cracked, as with repeated roars they dragged the carcass of the buffalo through the thorns to the spot where they intended to devour it.

That which was music to our ears was discord to those of Mahomet, who with terror in his face came to us and exclaimed, "Master, what's that?
What for master and the missus come to this bad country?
That's one bad kind will eat the missus in the night! Perhaps he come and eat Mahomet!" This afterthought was too much for him, and Bacheet immediately comforted him by telling the most horrible tales of death and destruction that had been wrought by lions, until the nerves of Mahomet were completely unhinged.
This was a signal for story-telling, when suddenly the aggageers changed the conversation by a few tales of the Bas-e natives, which so thoroughly eclipsed the dangers of wild beasts that in a short time the entire party would almost have welcomed a lion, provided he would have agreed to protect them from the Bas-e.

In this very spot where we were then camped, a party of Arab hunters had, two years previous, been surprised at night and killed by the Bas-e, who still boasted of the swords that they possessed as spoils from that occasion.