CH. Mil] A DIFFICULT SHOT 185 



lair. Again and again, as we beat cautiously througli 

 the bushes, the rank smell of the beasts smote our 

 nostrils. At last, as we sat at the foot of one koppie, 

 Kermit spied through his glasses a lion on the side of 

 the koppie opposite, the last and biggest, and u}) it we 

 climbed. On the very summit was a mass of cleft and 

 broken boulders, and while on these Kermit put up two 

 lions from the bushes which crowded beneath them. 

 T missed a running shot at the lioness as she made off 

 through the brush. He probably hit the lion, and \ ery 

 cautiously, with rifles at the ready, we beat through the 

 thick cover in hopes of finding it, but in vain. Then we 

 began a hunt for the lioness, as apparently she had not 

 left the koppie. Soon one of the gun-bearers, wlio was 

 standing on a big stone, peering under some thick 

 bushes, beckoned excitedly to me, and when I jumped 

 up beside him he pointed at the lioness. In a second 

 I made her out. The sleek, sinister creature lay not 

 ten paces off, her sinuous body following the curves of 

 the rock as she crouched flat, looking straight at me. 

 A stone covered the lower part, and the left of the 

 upper part, of her head ; but I saw her two unwinking 

 green eyes looking into mine. As she could have 

 reached me in two springs, perhaps in one, I wished 

 to shoot straight ; but I had to avoid the rock which 

 covered the lower part of her face, and, moreover, I 

 fired a little too much to the left. The bullet v/ent 

 through the side of her head and in between the neck 

 and shoulder, infiictino- a mortal, but not immediatelv 

 fatal, wound. However, it knocked her off the little 

 ledge on which she was lying, and, instead of charging, 

 she rushed up hill. We promptly followed, and again 

 clambered up the mass of boulders at the top. Peering 

 over the one on wliich I had climbed, there was the 



