"Yes, it certainly is," agreed Dick, somewhat reluctantly. "And of course," he continued, "if it should happen that those two yarns are a record of actual occurrences presented in the guise of fiction, it will not be by any means the first time that such a thing has occurred. Anyhow," he concluded, "I do not see that we can possibly do any harm by acting, as you suggest, upon the assumption that the yarns, however extravagant they may have appeared to us when we read them, are records of actual fact, and using our recollection of them in any manner that may seem advantageous to us. Is that agreed?" "Yes, certainly," assented Grosvenor. "We can but try it, and see how it works. And now, to change the subject, what say you about outspanning? This seems to be a good spot, eh?" During the foregoing conversation the two speakers had been walking on ahead of the wagon, with their rifles in the hollow of their arms, the dogs and Leo, the lion cub, trotting amicably at their heels. They had arrived at a spot about a mile from the village, and were now traversing an open "flat" with plenty of grass, close to the margin of a small stream. As Grosvenor had suggested, it was an excellent spot upon which to outspan, for there were grass and water for the cattle, and it was sufficiently far away from the village to prevent any of those annoyances that a nearer approach might have subjected them to; they therefore halted, and when the wagon came up the order to outspan was given. A few minutes later, while Jantje and 'Nkuku were superintending the watering of the oxen, some half-dozen women, carrying baskets poised upon their heads, were seen approaching from the village. When, somewhat later, these women arrived at the wagon, the leader of them announced that the contents of the baskets, consisting of green mealie cobs, sugar cane, eggs, sweet potatoes, half a dozen shockingly skinny chickens, milk, and _joala_ (a kind of native beer) were a present from the headman of the village to the strangers. (Six months earlier the travellers would have laughed incredulously at the idea of liquids being conveyed in baskets; but now they took it quite as a matter of course, for they had by this time grown quite familiar with the native basket, so exquisitely woven out of grass as to be quite impervious to leakage). They accepted the gift with a few words--but not too many--of thanks, and then, desirous of creating a good impression upon the Makolo as early as might be, they directed the women to wait, and, going to the wagon, took from their store of "notions" a few yards of gaudily printed cotton stuff, two or three yards of brass wire, half a dozen empty two- ounce tobacco tins decorated with gilt and coloured lettering, in the style familiar to all devotees of the weed, a small wooden box containing about a pint of mixed beads, and to each of the smiling and expectant basket-bearers a special present for herself, consisting of a