For the book was the Bible which
Livingstone all through his heroic exploring of Africa read each day.
So Livingstone passed on from the village; but this boy Khama never
forgot him, and in time--as we shall see--other white men came and
taught Khama himself to read that same book and worship that same God.
_The Fight with the Lion_
Meanwhile strange adventures came to the growing young Khama. This is
the story of some of them:
The leaping flames of a hunting camp-fire threw upon the dark
background of thorn trees weird shadows of the men who squatted in a
circle on the ground, talking.
The men were all Africans, the picked hunters from the tribe of the
Bamangwato. They were out on the spoor of a great lion that had made
himself the terror of the tribe. Night after night the lion had leapt
among their oxen and had slain the choicest in the chief's herds.
Again and again the hunters had gone out on the trail of the ferocious
beast; but always they returned empty-handed, though boasting loudly
of what they would do when they should face the lion.
"To-morrow, yes, to-morrow," cried a young Bamangwato hunter rolling
his eyes, "I will slay _tau e bogale_--the fierce lion."
The voices of the men rose on the night air as the whole group
declared that the beast should ravage their herds no more--the whole
group, except one.
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