But though there was a scarcity of boats and other signs of commerce there was no lack of animal life. Frank was looking out from the deck of the steamer as it turned a bend in the river; suddenly he saw a large animal not twenty yards away, standing where it had apparently been drinking, at the edge of the river. As it caught sight of the boat it sprung up the bank and disappeared in the thicket, giving vent to an angry roar as it moved away.
"That was a lion," said Abdul, who happened to be looking in the same direction, "and you will see more of his race as we proceed. Lions are quite numerous in this part of the country, and in fact all over Africa, and if you want to hunt them you can easily do so. And there are leopards and other carnivorous animals here," he continued, "and several varieties of serpents."
Fred asked if they were in the region of the huge pythons, that were said to be large enough to swallow a man.
"We are not quite far enough for that," was the reply, "but you might see some very good ones here if you went to the snaky localities. Serpents ten or fifteen feet long exist here, but you must go nearer the equator to find them of twenty feet.
"The natives say that a man should always cross his legs like a figure four when he goes to sleep at night, otherwise he is liable to be swallowed by a python. He is said to do his work so quietly that he does not wake his victim, and can only be foiled in his attempt when the man crosses his legs as I have described, and prevents both feet being taken in at once."
"If you want a good story of an adventure with a snake," said Frank, "let me tell you of Colonel Long's experience as he narrates it."
Fred agreed to be a good listener, and so Frank settled into his chair and began the thrilling tale:
[Illustration: COLONEL LONG'S GREAT SNAKE.]
"Colonel Long says he was one day seated in his camp at Foueira, near the borders of the Albert N'yanzi, when he saw several men approaching with what he at first supposed was the trunk of a tree. It proved to be a large boa-constrictor, or python, which had just been killed close to the hut where he slept at night. It measured thirty feet in length, and in diameter was the size of a child. One of his men had said that a huge snake came every night to suck the cows in the camp; but the colonel had taken the narrative as an apocryphal 'snake-story' and given it no attention. The night before, his men were seated around the fire in the hut next his own, and suddenly fled in terror at the sight of an enormous head looking at them from an opening in the wall of the hut, and at the same time countless small serpents were gliding at their feet.