398 RHINOCEROS OF THE LADO [ch. xiv 



Wherever they came together there would be a 

 moment's spurt of roaring, crackhng lire, and then it 

 would vanish, leaving at that point a blank in the circle 

 of flame. Gradually the blanks in the lines extended, 

 until the Are thus burnt itself out, and darkness 

 succeeded the bright red glare. 



The fires continued to burn in our neighbourhood for 

 a couple of days. Finally, one evening the great beds 

 of papyrus across the bay caught fire. After nightfall it 

 was splendid to see the line of flames leaping fifty feet 

 into the air as they worked across the serried masses of 

 tall papyrus, ^^^hen tliey came toward the water they 

 kindled the surface of the bay into a ruddy glare, while 

 above them the crimson smoke-clouds drifted slowly to 

 leeward. The fire did not die out until toward morning, 

 and then, behind it, we heard the grand booming chorus 

 of a party of lions. They were full fed, and roaring as 

 they went to their day beds ; each would utter a succes- 

 sion of roars, which grew louder and louder until they 

 fairly thundered, and then died gradually away, until 

 they ended in a succession of sighs and grunts. 



As the fires burned to and fro across the country, 

 birds of many kinds came to the edge of the flames to 

 pick up the insects which were driven out. There were 

 marabou storks, kites, hawks, ground hornbills, and 

 flocks of beautiful egrets and cow herons, which stalked 

 sedately through the grass, and now and then turned 

 a small tree nearly white by all perching in it. The 

 little bank-swallows came in myriads — exactly the same, 

 by the way, as our familiar home friends, for the bank- 

 swallow is the most widely distributed of all birds. The 

 most conspicuous attendants of the fires, however, were 

 the bee-eaters, the largest and handsomest we had yet 

 seen, their plumage every shade of blended red and rose 



