98 DEPRIVING THE LION OF HIS PREY. 



any thing with certainty. Being unable, however, to endure 

 the suspense any longer, and regardless of the danger to which 

 I exposed myself, I caught up my fowling-piece, which hap- 

 pened to be loaded with ball, and set out in the direction 

 whence the wailings, now fast dying away, proceeded. 



I had not gone very far, however, before I fell in with a 

 number of the natives, who were hastening in the same di- 

 rection as myself. 



My road, for the most part, lay through a dense tamarisk 

 coppice, and it was surprising to me how I ever managed to 

 thread the labyrinth. The hope of saving human life, how- 

 ever, enabled me to overcome all obstacles. I might have 

 been three or four minutes in the brake when, on coming to 

 a small opening, I suddenly encountered, and all but stumbled 

 over, a large black mass lying at my feet, while close to my 

 ear I heard the twang of a bow-string and the whizzing of 

 an arrow. At the same moment, and within a very few 

 paces of where I stood, I was startled by the terrific roar of 

 a lion, which seemed to shake the ground beneath me. This 

 was immediately followed by a savage and exulting cry of 

 triumph from a number of the natives. 



Having recovered from my surprise, I found that the dark 

 object that had nearly upset me was one of the natives stoop- 

 ing over a dead zebra, which the lion had just killed, and 

 then learned, for the first time, to my great astonishment as 

 well as relief, that the wailings which had caused me so much 

 uneasiness, and which I imagined were those of a dying man, 

 proceeded from this poor animal.* 



The design of the natives, who, from the first, I take it, 

 well knew what they were about, was simply to possess them- 

 selves of the zebra, in which they had fully succeeded. While 



* I have since had frequent opportunities of hearing the dying groans 

 of the zebra, which in reality greatly resemble the faint gasps and 

 ejaculations of a drowning man. Even the subdued neighings of this 

 animal, when heard from a distance, are of a very melancholy nature. 



