78 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
barrelled rifle I fired the second. I hit him again, 
but not with the desired result. He charged. 
There I was with an empty gun to meet the 
charge of a wounded lion, and with no one else, 
not even a gun boy, near. All the rules of lion hunt- 
ing say that you must meet a charge without moving. 
But all the promptings of instinct were to move, and 
{i moved. I slipped to one side behind a clump of 
high grass as fast as I could, endeavouring meanwhile 
to reload. A few seconds after I had left the spot 
where I should have stood the lion’s spring landed 
him directly on it. He had had to come through a 
little depression, and this and the long grass had ob- 
scured his sight so he had not seen me move. Not 
landing on me as he expected so disconcerted him 
that, even though he saw me, he dived into the thick 
bushes right ahead of him instead of coming at me. 
There he stopped, threatening for a time to repeat 
his charge. Finally, changing his mind, he headed 
deeper into the brush and, as it was too thick to 
follow him, I let him go. In the mix-up my syce had 
become so completely frightened that he had jumped 
into the river, so he was quite unable to tell whether 
the lion had got my pony or the pony had run away. 
After a certain amount of fruitless searching I walked 
the ten miles back to camp. 
The usual movement of a lion is a walk or a kind 
of fox trot. At speed he will still continue to trot 
except at maximum effort, when he gallops. 
Lions do not usually have any habitation; but oc- 
casionally they live in caves. When I say live, I do 
