Our experience at night proved that the Mabundas had not exaggerated much in what they told us about the lions. After sunset we heard their chorus begin, and it did not cease till dawn. I should not think the animals were more than 150 yards away from us. Up in the little village the people had to be on the watch to keep them at bay, and kept on shouting and beating a drum, while nearly every enclosure was illumined by a fire. My own boatmen sat up, spear in hand, nearly all night, and weird enough their shadows were as they fell upon the fence. No lions, however, ventured to attack us.
For the next two days I was worse rather than better, and vain were my efforts to amuse myself with either my diary or my sketch-book. My disorder was aggravated by the ungenial weather, and even in the most violent fits of fever I was conscious of a feeling of shivering under the keen north-east blast. I endeavoured to keep up my spirits, but writing, which was my sole resource, was a painful trial to me, and the lines danced before my eyes.
I could not bear the thought of going back to Sesheke, and determined to make a vigorous endeavour once again to go ahead. Accordingly on the 8th we started, but the exertion was too much for me, and in the evening I had to be carried ashore. Scarcely had I been laid down in a grass-hut left by some previous passengers, when I was seized with such an attack of sickness and diarrhœa, that I really began to fear that I should not live till morning.
Except at the Victoria Falls, the part of the river
