06 African Adventure Read Online Free PDF

becoming scarce. Of course, nobody needs to pay that much to keep warm. A lady with less expensive tastes can buy an ocelot coat for thirteen hundred pounds, cheetah for one thousand pounds, jaguar for three hundred and fifty pounds. Leopard fur is the strongest and most durable.’
    Breakfast was ready now, and the hungry hunters fell to with a will. Zulu came out of the cage to get her share, Everyone was much too interested in bacon and eggs and hot biscuits and coffee to notice the cubs until Roger cried:
    ‘They’re out. They’re running away.’
    But the little leopards were not running away. Instead, they waddled in pursuit of their foster-mother. They rubbed against her legs and licked her fur. They sniffed at her dish of meat and turned away. This was not their idea of good food. They were friendly little beasts. One of them scrambled up into Roger’s lap and licked his face with a tongue that felt like coarse sandpaper. In no time at all it had rubbed off the skin and drawn blood.
    Ouch!’ cried Roger. ‘You’re just too good to me,’ and he pushed the woolly ball down into his lap.
    But the little bundle of energy showed surprising strength. He threw off Roger’s hand and leaped up on the camp table, one paw splashing into Hal’s fried eggs and the other into a cup of coffee.
    He was captured and placed on the ground, where he set to work licking off his wet paws.
    In the meantime, the other cub had disappeared.
    ‘It can’t be far away,’ Hunt said. ‘Look in the tents.’
    The men dived into the tents and searched in corners and under cots and even in the canvas bath-tubs, but found no cub. They came out and searched the grass and bushes around the camp, with no result.
    Then Roger happened to look up into the foliage of a tree that stood just inside the circle of tents. There was the cub, lying perfectly still on a low branch, watching with bright eyes as these silly humans ran here and there hunting for him. Now he really looked like a leopard rather than just a ball of woolly fur. His little claws gripped the branch. There was an almost savage blaze in his yellow-green eyes. He was ready to spring on anything passing below. This was something he had never been taught, but something that leopards had done for thousands of years, and the instinct was planted deep in his nerves and brain.

Chapter 5
The unlucky Colonel Bigg
    It was just Colonel Bigg’s bad luck that he should choose this moment to walk into camp. The leopard, perched high where he could get a good view, was the first to see him. The mischievous little beast crouched low, dug his claws into the branch and prepared to leap upon the newcomer.
    Colonel Bigg did not see the ball of fur on the branch. He saw only the tents and a fire and men. And he smelt bacon and eggs. And he was hungry.
    While he was still hidden by the bushes, he stopped to spruce himself up. He removed his hat, took a comb from his pocket, and combed his hair. He smoothed the kinks out of his hat, replaced it on his head, and tipped it at just the right angle. After all, he was a White Hunter, or pretended to be, and must look the part. He straightened his bush-jacket and brushed the dust from his safari shorts.
    He puffed out his chest like a pouter pigeon and tried to look important. That was not too easy, since he was not important. It so happened that Colonel Benjamin Bigg, White Hunter, was not a colonel and not a White Hunter.
    He had owned a farm in Northern Rhodesia, but he was not a good farmer. He had gone bankrupt and lost his farm. While he was wondering what to do next, a man suggested, ‘Why don’t you become a White Hunter?’
    It was an exciting idea. He, a White Hunter!
    When a wealthy American, or German, or anybody, wants to go hunting big game in Africa, he hires a White Hunter to go with him, a man who knows the country, knows where to find the animals, and knows how to shoot.
    When out on safari (a hunting trip) it is the White Hunter who