The
Leopard Man glanced casually over his finger nails in a manner which would have been critical had it not been so sad.
THE FOX and the
Leopard disputed which was the more beautiful of the two.
Beyond these general characters their heads had little in common; each preserved the quality of its particular species: the human mark distorted but did not hide the
leopard, the ox, or the sow, or other animal or animals, from which the creature had been moulded.
The pelt of a
leopard covered the nakedness of the youth; but the wearing of it had not been dictated by any prompting of modesty.
As garmenture the women possessed a single robe of some light-colored, spotted hide, rather similar in appearance to a
leopard's skin.
For there was in the woods an animal of the
leopard family, called tiger or "tigre" by the natives, that was exceedingly fierce and dangerous.
With this intention, he took a spear in each hand, and threw a
leopard's skin over his shoulders, to keep off the rain, and set forth on his travels, with his long yellow ringlets waving in the wind.
Usually, after the lion came the
leopard and sometimes the buzz of the tsetse fly.
That night a little son was born in the tiny cabin beside the primeval forest, while a
leopard screamed before the door, and the deep notes of a lion's roar sounded from beyond the ridge.
So he sent messages to the other animals, like the lions and the
leopards and the antelopes, to come and help with the nursing.
They could distinguish sheep and goats too, confined in large cages, set up on piles to keep them out of reach of the
leopards' fangs.
Even if he could, there were the lions and the
leopards and the hyenas, any one of which, as Tibo was well aware, was particularly fond of the meat of little black boys.