The boys yielded to his representations; and, turning in a different direction from that followed by the elephants, they arrived in another quarter of an hour at Bavian's Pool, which lay in the very heart of the bush, with a clear space overgrown with grass and short rushes of about twenty yards all round. On the west side appeared the rocks of which Kobo had told them, and which presented a most picturesque appearance. They rose abruptly from the bank of the tarn, to the height of perhaps twenty feet, and sank down with a sharp descent to the level ground everywhere, except in one place where a series of crags, piled one on another, presented a kind of rude and very steep staircase, by which the top might be attained. Up this the party climbed, and ensconced themselves snugly under a shelf of rock from which they could see the whole of the pool and the surrounding banks. It was still broad daylight when they reached their place of ambush, and the spot was as vacant and still as though the whole landscape had been a part of the great Kalahari itself But they had not been there a quarter of an hour, when the sun disappeared behind the belt of woodland which bounded the sight, and the night of the tropics succeeded with its startling rapidity. The green waste of thorns and shrubs grew first dusky brown, and then deep black; the bright sparkling water a dull gleamy mirror, faintly rendering back the pale opal of the sky. But presently there came a further change. The moon rose higher in the heavens, and the stars came forth in all the unimaginable glories of a southern night--not mere specks of light as seen in the more cloudy skies of the north, but hung like cressets in the glowing air, the moon itself a bright globe of liquid fire. A clear soft radiancy diffused itself over the whole scene, tipping every tree top and distant eminence with silver, and causing the surface of the tarn, as it rippled lazily under the evening breeze, to flash in circlets of light. Presently there came a pattering of feet, as a crowd of small animals came down from different points of the compass to quench their thirst--antelopes with their slender legs and liquid eyes, glancing timidly round them; elands and koodoos tossing their stately heads; gnus and buffaloes in large herds consorting together for mutual protection; hyenas, jackals, and zebras, plunging to the mid-leg in the cool dancing waters, and bounding lightly away when their drought was satisfied. It was a beautiful sight to watch them come and go, like the scenes in a magic-lantern.