The chief topic of conversation at the breakfast-table on the following morning was, as might be expected, big game shooting; and it then transpired that the Russian colonel had never faced anything bigger or more formidable than bears or wolves. He was consequently much elated at the prospect of encountering the lordly lion in his native wilds; especially with so effective a weapon as the magazine rifle firing twenty shots without reloading, upon the merits of which Colonel Lethbridge expatiated eloquently. His elation was of the kind that easily becomes contagious, and the party were in high spirits when at length they rose from the table and proceeded to the gun-room to select their weapons and provide themselves with a supply of cartridges. These cartridges, it should be explained, were, like almost everything else connected with the _Flying Fish_, of quite a unique character, and totally unlike those used in the ordinary weapons of sport or warfare, in that they were not charged with gunpowder, but with a preparation of the singular substance employed for generating the motive power of the ship's engines. This substance was so tremendously powerful that a very minute quantity was all that was needed to take the place of the usual powder charge, hence the possibility of stowing away as many as twenty cartridges in a magazine of only ordinary size. Furthermore, the cartridges were loaded with several different kinds of missiles. There was, for instance, the cartridge charged with shot of various sizes-- from dust-shot for the killing of humming-birds and such like, up to ordinary buck-shot--enclosed in a case so fragile that the friction of its passage along the rifling of the barrel destroyed it, causing it to crumble to dust as it emerged from the muzzle of the weapon, and leave the charge of shot free to do its work in the same manner as though fired from an ordinary shot-gun. Then there was the cartridge charged with the usual sporting bullet employed for shooting such game as buck and antelopes; the cartridge with a soft-nosed bullet for war purposes and the shooting of the larger game, such as giraffes, lions, tigers, leopards, and the like; and, finally, the cartridge charged with a thick, heavy steel shell that exploded and blew to pieces upon striking its mark, thus inflicting so terrible a wound as usually to prove instantly fatal. This last was intended for use in the shooting of elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and other animals with exceptionally thick hides, and for any case of exceptional emergency. It was, of course, the Numbers 2 and 3 cartridges with which the sportsmen provided themselves on the present occasion.