'Alphonse!' 'Oui, monsieur,' answered a voice.

'Here am I.' I looked round but could see nobody.

'Where ?' I cried.
'Here am I, monsieur, in the tree.' I looked, and there, peering out of a hole in the trunk of the banyan about five feet from the ground, I saw a pale face and a pair of large mustachios, one clipped short and the other as lamentably out of curl as the tail of a newly whipped pug.

Then, for the first time, I realized what I had suspected before -- namely, that Alphonse was an arrant coward.

I walked up to him.
'Come out of that hole,' I said.
'Is it finished, monsieur ?' he asked anxiously; 'quite finished?
Ah, the horrors I have undergone, and the prayers I have uttered!' 'Come out, you little wretch,' I said, for I did not feel amiable; 'it is all over.' 'So, monsieur, then my prayers have prevailed?
I emerge,' and he did.
As we were walking down together to join the others, who were gathered in a group by the wide entrance to the kraal, which now resembled a veritable charnel-house, a Masai, who had escaped so far and been hiding under a bush, suddenly sprang up and charged furiously at us.