"Ah! what a fine
way to travel this is; and how one can snap his fingers at
all that vermin!--Doctor! Mr. Kennedy! see those packs
of wild animals hurrying along close together. There are
fully two hundred. Those are wolves."
"No! Joe, not wolves, but wild dogs; a famous breed
that does not hesitate to attack the lion himself. They
are the worst customers a traveller could meet, for they
would instantly tear him to pieces."
"Well, it isn't Joe that'll undertake to muzzle them!"
responded that amiable youth. "After all, though, if
that's the nature of the beast, we mustn't be too hard on
them for it!"
Silence gradually settled down under the influence of
the impending storm: the thickened air actually seemed
no longer adapted to the transmission of sound; the
atmosphere appeared MUFFLED, and, like a room hung with
tapestry, lost all its sonorous reverberation. The "rover
bird" so-called, the coroneted crane, the red and
blue jays, the mocking-bird, the flycatcher, disappeared
among the foliage of the immense trees, and all nature
revealed symptoms of some approaching catastrophe.
At nine o'clock the Victoria hung motionless over
Msene, an extensive group of villages scarcely distinguishable
in the gloom.
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