Emson was right, for Dyke was awakened that night by the alarm of the horses and oxen, who gave pretty good evidence of the huge cat's being near, but a couple of shots from Emson's gun rang out, and the animals settled down quietly once again, there being no further disturbance that night on the lonely farm. CHAPTER EIGHT. THE DESERT HERDS. "I tell you what, little un," said Emson some mornings later, "I'm going to start a crest and motto, and I'll take a doubled fist for the crest, and _Nil desperandum_ for motto." "And what good will that do you?" said Dyke, hammering away as he knelt on the sand with the lion's skull held between his knees. "What good! Why, I shall always have my motto before me--`Never despair,' and the doubled fist to--" "To show that you are always ready to punch Kaffir Jack's head," cried Dyke quickly; and bang went the hammer on the end of the cold chisel the boy held. "No," said Emson, laughing--"to denote determination." "`Inasmuch as to which?' as the Yankee said in his book.--Pincers, please. Here, what have you done with those pincers, Joe?" "Haven't touched them. They're underneath you, stupid." "Oh, ah! so they are," said Dyke; and picking them up, he took careful hold of one of the lion's tusks, after loosening it with the hammer and chisel, and dragged it out without having injured the enamel in the least. The two sharply-pointed fangs had been extracted from the lower jaw, and Dyke was busily operating on the skull, which was, like the bones scattered here and there, picked quite clean, the work of the jackals and vultures having been finished off by the ants; and as Dyke held up the third tusk in triumph, his brother took the piece of curved ivory and turned it over in his hand, while Duke and the horses seemed to be interested spectators. "Magnificent specimen of a canine tooth," said Emson thoughtfully. Dyke laughed. "I know better than that. It can't be." "Can't? But it is," replied Emson. "What do you mean?" "Canine means dog, doesn't it? Dog's teeth can't grow in a big cat. It's a feline tooth." "They can grow in human jaws--in yours, for instance. You have four canine teeth, as the naturalists call them; so why can't they grow in a lion's?" "Because it's unnatural," said Dyke, beginning to chip away some of the jawbone from around the last tusk. "Canine teeth can grow in my jaws, because you said one day that I was a puppy." "I say, don't, little un. You're growing too clever, and attempts at jokes like that don't seem to fit out here in this hungry desert. Mind what you are about, or you'll spoil the tooth." "I'm minding; but what did you mean about your _Nil desperandum_?" "That I'll never despair. When we've tried everything we can out here, and failed, we'll go back home and settle in London. Something always turns up, and you're so handy, that we'll start as dentists, and you shall extract all the teeth."