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At a signal given, the crowd rushes on the animal, and each man hacks and cuts at the part nearest to him, the rule of the game being that any part cut off must be carried out of the rush and deposited on the ground before it can become the bearer's property.

Many holes, drilled in the conical turret-roof of this vagabond Pharos, let up spouts of dazzlement into the bearer's eyes; and as he paced forth in the ghostly darkness, carrying his own sun by a ring about his finger, day and night swung to and fro and up and down about his footsteps.

The king sat astride the bearer's neck with a leg over each shoulder and his feet tucked under the bearer's arms. When one of these royal carriers grew tired he shot the king on to the shoulders of a second man without allowing the royal feet to touch the ground. In this way they went at a great pace and travelled long distances in a day, when the king was on a journey.

A pair of large double blankets to make the tent of, that was one swag, and a very unwieldy one it was, strapped knapsack fashion, with straps of flax-leaves, on the back, and the bearer's coat and waistcoat fastened on the top of the whole. The next load consisted of one small single blanket for my sole use, inside of which was packed a cold leg of lamb.

The walking then became comparatively easy, but Mark's weariness was on the increase, and there were moments when the faint glow of light which spread around Dummy, as he walked in front, grew misty and strange, playing fantastic tricks to the observer's eye: now it seemed close to him; now it and the black silhouette it formed of the bearer's body appeared to be far-off, and to die away in the distance, but only to return again with a sudden jerk, as Mark started and tried to step out more firmly.

I perceive that I have reached the limits, not of the bearer's good-will, but of equilibrium. The Spider would adopt an indefinite further number of foundlings, if the dimensions of her back afforded them a firm hold. Let us be content with this. Let us restore each family to its mother, drawing at random from the lot.

The unhorsed ones promptly find a leg of the mother, the usual climbing-pole; they swarm up it as fast as they can and recover their places on the bearer's back. The living bark of animals is reconstructed in the twinkling of an eye. To speak here of mother-love were, I think, extravagant.

Then, on the gun bearer's approach: "Look through the glasses and tell me whether that smoke is a house or a fire in the grass." Simba accepted the glasses, but first took a good look with the naked eye. He caught the location of the smoke almost at once. Then for a full two minutes he stared through the lenses. "It is a house, bwana," he decided.

Another ordinary sight, as sylvan as the above and more agreeable, was a girl, bearing on her back a huge bundle of green twigs and shrubs, or grass, intermixed with scarlet poppies and blue flowers; the verdant burden being sometimes of such size as to hide the bearer's figure, and seem a self-moving mass of fragrant bloom and verdure.

"What is it?" cried Arthur and Mildred, in a breath, as they arrived on the scene of the supposed disaster. I must have a cooler man. It makes me positively ill to see him puffing and blowing and dripping under my nose like a fresh basted joint." Miss Terry's realistic description of her bearer's appearance, which was, to say the least of it, limp and moist, was no exaggeration.