My thoughts went rapidly over the millions of leagues of land and sea, where life, that perpetual problem, was now awaking to another day of struggle and temptation. Then the golden arrows of the day followed fast. The silver and blue sky grew roseate with that wide wild blush which testifies to the modest delight of nature, satisfied and grateful for her silent existence and her amorous repose. I breakfasted, went down into the donga with a black boy, poor Jim-jim, who was afterwards, as I said, to perish by an awful fate, otherwise he would testify to the truth of my plain story. I began poking among the rocks in the dry basin of the donga, {185} and had just picked up a pebble—I knew it by the soapy feel for a diamond. Uncut it was about three times the size of the koh-i-noor, say 1,000 carats, and I was rejoicing in my luck when I heard the scream of a human being in the last agony of terror. Looking up, I saw that on either side of the donga, which was about twenty feet wide, a great black lion and lioness were standing with open jaws, while some fifty yards in front of me an alligator, in a deep pool of the flooded donga, was stretching his open snout and gleaming teeth greedily upwards. Over head flew an eagle, and _in mid-air between_, as I am a living and honourable man, a human being was leaping the chasm. He had been pursued by the lion on my left, and had been driven to attempt the terrible leap; but if he crossed he was certain to fall into the jaws of the lion on my right, while if he fell short in his jump, do you see, the alligator was ready for him below, and the great golden eagle watched the business from above, in case he attempted to escape _that_ way.