whether his own or the leopard's I could not tell. At first I thought
that he was dead, but after I had poured some water over him from the
little stream that trickled down the rock, he sat up and asked
inconsequently:

"What am I now?"

"A hero," I answered. (I have always been proud of that repartee.)

Then, discouraging further conversation, I set to work to get him back
to the camp, which fortunately was close at hand.

When we had proceeded a couple of hundred yards, he still making
inconsequent remarks, his right arm round my neck and my left arm
round his middle, suddenly he collapsed in a dead faint, and as his
weight was more than I could carry, I had to leave him and fetch help.

In the end I got him to the tents by aid of the Kaffirs and a blanket,
and there made an examination. He was scratched all over, but the only
serious wounds were a bite through the muscles of the left upper arm
and three deep cuts in the right thigh just where it joins the body,
caused by a stroke of the leopard's claws. I gave him a dose of
laudanum to send him to sleep and dressed these hurts as best I could.
For three days he went on quite well. Indeed, the wounds had begun to
heal healthily when suddenly some kind of fever took him, caused, I
suppose, by the poison of the leopard's fangs or claws.

Oh! what a terrible week was that which followed! He became delirious,
raving continually of all sorts of things, and especially of Miss
Margaret Manners. I kept up his strength as well as was possible with