About nine o’clock
`` However , as I have said , confidence was completely restored ; and that evening everybody in the kraal , including the superannuated victim of jealousy in the little hut where the mealie cobs were stored , went to bed with a sense of sweet security from elephants and all other animals that prowl by night . `` For my part , I pitched my camp below the kraal ; and then , having procured a beam of wood from the head man -- rather a rotten one , by the way -- I set it across two boughs that ran out laterally from the baobab tree , at a height of about twenty-five feet from the ground , in such fashion that I and another man could sit upon it with our legs hanging down , and rest our backs against the bole of the tree . This done I went back to the camp and ate my supper . About nine o'clock , half-an-hour before the moon-rise , I summoned Gobo , who , thinking that he had seen about enough of the delights of big game hunting for that day , did not altogether relish the job ; and , despite his remonstrances , gave him my eight-bore to carry , I having the .570-express . Then we set out for the tree . It was very dark , but we found it without difficulty , though climbing it was a more complicated matter . However , at last we got up and sat down , like two little boys on a form that is too high for them , and waited .