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. The Bas-e knew
this spot as the favorite resting-place of the Hamran hunting-parties,
and they might be not far distant NOW, as we were in the heart of their
country. This intelligence was a regular damper to the spirits of some
of the party. Mahomet quietly retired and sat down by Barrak, the
ex-slave woman, having expressed a resolution to keep awake every hour
that he should be compelled to remain in that horrible country. The
lions roared louder and louder, but no one appeared to notice such small
thunder; all thoughts were fixed upon the Bas-e, so thoroughly had the
aggageers succeeded in frightening not only Mahomet, but also our
Tokrooris.
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