LION HUNTING ON THE KAPITI PLAINS 73 



This patch of tall, thick brush stood on the hither 

 bank that is, on our side of the watercourse. We rode 

 up to it and shouted loudly. The response was immediate, 

 in the shape of loud gruntings, and crashings through 

 the thick brush. We were off our horses in an instant, I 

 throwing the reins over the head of mine; and without de- 

 lay the good old fellow began placidly grazing, quite un- 

 moved by the ominous sounds immediately in front. 



I sprang to one side; and for a second or two we waited, 

 uncertain whether we should see the lions charging out 

 ten yards distant or running away. Fortunately, they 

 adopted the latter course. Right in front of me, thirty 

 yards off, there appeared, from behind the bushes which 

 had first screened him from my eyes, the tawny, galloping 

 form of a big maneless lion. Crack! the Winchester spoke; 

 and as the soft-nosed bullet ploughed forward through his 

 flank the lion swerved so that I missed him with the second 

 shot; but my third bullet went through the spine and for- 

 ward into his chest. Down he came, sixty yards off, his 

 hind quarters dragging, his head up, his ears back, his 

 jaws open and lips drawn up in a prodigious snarl, as he 

 endeavored to turn to face us. His back was broken; but 

 of this we could not at the moment be sure, and if it had 

 merely been grazed, he might have recovered, and then, 

 even though dying, his charge might have done mischief. 

 So Kermit, Sir Alfred, and I fired, almost together, into his 

 chest. His head sank, and he died. 



This lion had come out on the left of the bushes; the 

 other, to the right of them, had not been hit, and we saw 

 him galloping off across the plain, six or eight hundred 

 yards away. A couple more shots missed, and we mounted 



