A NIGHT IN THE REEDS It was good to sit around the glowing embers where the buffalo-steak sizzled and threw out an odour that made their mouths water, good to sip the hot coffee and to look out upon the great wilderness rising up to the distant watershed of the lower bank of the Congo.

From the cliff above starlings flew out to seek their feeding-haunts where the big game fed; and there was a familiar visitor near them in the black and drab stone-chat, whose scolding chirp they had so often heard in England among the gorse and bramble.

The metallic cry of guinea-fowl down by the little river had a farm-yard ring; but the chatter of parrots flying overhead was still new, and so with many other calls, so that they sat munching in silence, with eyes and ears too much engaged for speech, even if the buffalo-steak had not given their mouths other occupation.

They saw the vultures speeding from out the uttermost reach of the blue vault to feed upon the carcass of the dead monarch, the whereabouts of the feast having been detected from their distant haunts by a keenness of sight which for swiftness outdoes wireless telegraphy.

They swept on like frigates of the sky, heads thrust down, and the vast wings seeming to bear them on without beat or motion.
After breakfast the two boys left the camp for a little hunt on their own account, while Mr.Hume remained to help the chief cure the buffalo hide.