144 MY SOMALI BOOK 



of grass was not a large one and I sent two men up 

 trees with orders to fire into it, which they did, but 

 without success ; at length, however, one man from a 

 tree said he could see her. I climbed with the glasses 

 to his point of vantage and made her out lying on her 

 side in an open space in the middle of the grass, appa- 

 rently dead. Another bullet to make sure, and we 

 dragged her out, and examined her with interest. We 

 found that one of my shots had been a clean miss, 

 while the other had been unlucky in striking the neck 

 just to the right of the spinal cord and had passed out 

 through the side of the throat without causing any 

 serious injury. This affords another illustration of 

 the danger of the neck-shot even at close quarters, 

 unless nearly the whole of the neck is visible, and more 

 or less broad-side on : though no shot can be more 

 effective if correctly placed. Abdilleh's first shot had 

 found the heart, luckily for us both. His second had 

 been a miss. 



I at first supposed that of my two shots it was the 

 hurried second one which missed, but on consideration 

 do not think this can have been so ; I now believe 

 that my first bullet must have been too high, and 

 whizzing over made the lioness duck her head instinc- 

 tively, while it was the second that hit and moved her. 

 For the miss with my first barrel there was no excuse, 

 though I should have been wiser perhaps to wait for 

 a clearer shot in the first instance. In the outcome 

 the credit for the death of my seventh lion was all 

 Abdilleh's : pahnam qui meruit ferat. All the same, 

 the skin was mine, for I did at least, if in bungling 

 fashion, draw first blood ! 



