In Search of the Okapi | Page 3

will take me to him? You're a brick. What is he
like, eh? Is he old or young, eh?"
Compton kept cool outwardly, but he could not subdue the glitter of his
dark eyes, or keep the colour out of his cheeks.
"He is about five feet four. I can look over his head."
"Oh!"
"There are grey hairs in his beard."
"Quite old; old and little! What bad luck! He will have to look up to
us."
"Well, you know, he can't help being small, can he?"
"I suppose, like most little men, he is as vain as he can stick, bumptious,
and fidgety," said Venning, despondently.
"He struck me as being very quiet. At any rate, you can judge for
yourself, as we are due to see him within half an hour. You must tell
him that you are a naturalist, as he intends writing a book, in which a
great deal of space will be given to animals. He said he felt a 'bit shaky
on his pins' when it came to scientific terms."
"I should be glad to help him there," said Venning; "but it is too good.
He would never take a youngster like me."
"He said he would rather have a youngster who would carry out his
own views about treating a subject, than a man who would try to teach
him his business. Come along and see him for yourself."
"Within half an hour the two friends who had just left school entered a
room which was part library, part museum, armoury, dining- room, and
cabin, so crammed it was.

"This is my friend Venning, Mr. Hume."
"Glad to see you, Venning. Sit down anywhere."
Compton sat down between the horns of a bleached buffalo skull, but
Venning stood like one in a trance. His hand had been swallowed up by
a huge palm and thick iron-like fingers, and he was staring down on a
pair of the broadest shoulders he had seen, with an arching chest to
match. This was the pigmy he had imagined--this man with the
shoulders of a giant and the chest of a Hercules. Then his eyes ranged
over the walls, gradually recovering their animation.
"Know 'em," said Mr. Hume, waving a bronzed hand towards the wall.
"I think so, sir."
"Just reel off the names."
Venning reeled off the names of a score or more of animals without
hesitation, and Mr. Hume looked pleased.
"There are some men," he said, "who come in here and talk over me
and round me and under me about fur and feather, and they can't tell a
bighorn from a koodoo by the horns on the wall. Now, my friend, you
knew those over there in the corner were the horns of a koodoo, but do
you know his habits?"
"No, sir; but I spent a month watching a Dartmoor deer."
"A month! Can't learn anything in a month, boy; but you've struck the
right book. The pages that are spread out under the sky hold the right
teaching, for those who wish to learn about animals. There are writers
who make a study of structure; they argue from bones, and classify; but
bones don't tell us about the living flesh and blood. You take my
meaning?"
"You make a difference between the structure of animals and their
habits."

"That's so, my lad. Ever read Jeffreys, and the sketches by the 'Son of
the Marshes'?"
"They're splendid."
Mr. Hume nodded and filled a pipe, having a footlong stem, made out
of the wing-bone of an albatross.
"I want to describe the personal habits of animals in their surroundings.
I said 'personal' habits. Do you take me?"
"No, sir."
"You think I should use another word, and say, perhaps, 'distinctive'
habits. I say personal. Now, you take a lion--a bush lion or a veld lion,
a yellow lion or a black lion, young or old. That lion, whichever one
you take, is a lion by himself. He's got his own character and his own
experience. All lions have ways in common because they're built alike.
They're heavy and muscular because they've got to pull down big game;
and because they're heavy they move slowly, and because they move
slowly they've got to adopt common tactics in hunting. Good; but one
lion differs from another, and so with other animals, right away through
the list. So, I say, one must study the personal habits of animals in their
own back yard, so to say, before he can give a true description of them.
Do you take my meaning?"
"I should like nothing better than to study animals in their home," said
the boy, burning with excitement.
"And the two of you think you would like to join me in my
expedition?"
Mr. Hume looked at