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The long afternoon was half spent, and the kopje was just beginning to cast its shadow over the round-headed yellow flowers that grew between it and the farmhouse. Among the flowers the white butterflies hovered and on the old kraal mounds three white kids gambolled, and at the door of one of the huts an old grey-headed Kaffer-woman sat on the ground mending her mats.
Everyone thought that now the lion would kill Androcles. But a still more wonderful thing happened. Instead of killing Androcles, the lion gambolled around him, and fawned on him as if he were glad to meet again an old friend. Then Androcles understood. He had forgotten all about the lion he had met in the jungle the year before, whose pain he had relieved. But the lion had not forgotten him.
All the light, softened and tinted as it were by the green foliage, rested slumberingly upon the tall gilded Virgin, who seemed to descend with queenly mien, borne upon the cloud round which gambolled the winged cherubim.
Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day.
When the hour for rest arrived, each guest chose the portion of the earthen floor that suited him best, and, spreading out his blankets, with his saddle for a pillow, lay down to dream of golden nuggets, or, perchance, of home, while innumerable rats the bane of California gambolled round and over him. The ranchero, as the owner of such an establishment is named, was said to be an escaped felon.
With equal unconcern both gambolled under the shadow of the gallows, and took liberties with death that might have surprised a careless student of man's nature. I wrote of Parker that he behaved like a boy of ten: what was he else, being a slave of sixty? He had passed all his years in school, fed, clad, thought for, commanded; and had grown familiar and coquetted with the fear of punishment.
It was a crowded stage, and great was the anxiety of many of the mothers upon it lest their little ones should be thrust over the edge into the water. No such anxiety troubled the little ones themselves. With that freedom from care which is their high privilege, they even gambolled on the brink of destruction. Next day was the Sabbath. To go to church was impossible.
At Amsterdam a city which he compared to Venice for situation and splendour, and where one thousand ships were constantly lying he was received with "sundry great whales and other fishes of hugeness," that gambolled about his vessel, and convoyed him to the shore. These monsters of the deep presented him to the burgomaster and magistrates who were awaiting him on the quay.
I saw the son of Simeon enter one of these enclosures; and the lambs gambolled round him as if they knew him. He chose out four, which were carried to the supper-room, engaged in preparing the Paschal Lamb. I saw Peter and John go to several different parts of the town, and order various things.
Those faces, those figures, were the faces and figures of intimates whose pleasures I shared daily, companions with whom I had grown up, playfellows in the days when we gambolled in the streets, playfellows now in the pleasant fields of love and revelry.
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