The faint red light of the rising moon now began to filter through the trees and dimly illuminate the space opposite our resting place. Across this space there presently crept a large, shadowy form, which moved without a sound, and which I could now plainly make out to be a leopard. I rapped the hilt of my knife sharply against the tree, and the creature turned and trotted away; but in less than a minute a soft purr came from the dusky obscurity beyond, and then a half-smothered miall like the voice of a great tom-cat. Bukári and I both clapped our hands and shouted, whereupon a loud rustling in the undergrowth close by told us that the brute had made off again; but it had hardly gone when the long-drawn, melancholy cry of a hyæna sounded from the opposite direction, and presently as we sat stock-still and listened, a grey silhouette with high shoulders and green, glowing eyes stole silently across the dimly lighted space until a low, rumbling growl from the dark bushes made it turn and shuffle away, snarling and tittering as it went. Sleep under these circumstances was impossible, in spite of our fatigue. All night the leopard hovered round, now creeping close up with insinuating purrs, now mialling savagely at a little distance, now growling and spitting at some prowling hyæna. Nor were these the only disturbers of our peace, for all the monkeys of the forest seemed to have assembled to fight and quarrel in the tree above us; a veritable parliament of pottos had foregathered close by; while shortly before dawn a measured tramp and the crashing of branches told us that a troop of elephants was passing. So the night wore slowly and wearily away, and the first streaks of daylight found us still sitting wide awake in the angle of the root buttresses; but as the sun rose, the nocturnal beasts crept away to their lairs and left us alone, and at last we were able to lie down in peace on the soft earth and forget our miseries in sleep. The afternoon sun was slanting through the trees when I awoke and rose, yawning and stretching my stiffened limbs. Bukári still slept, and as I was loth to wake him, I occupied myself by making short excursions, keeping always well within sight of the tree, in the hopes of picking up something eatable. In one of these journeys, as I came round the trunk of a small tree, I perceived a large hornbill on the ground. The bird’s back was towards me, and it was busy tearing the skin off a plantain, which it had probably stolen from some village, so I was able to steal up behind it without being observed; and eventually with a sudden grab I seized it by the tail feathers, and in spite of its kicking, squawking, and snapping with its huge beak, I bore it in triumph back to the tree.