THE FIFTEEN LIONS 



shade, but two others were playing like puppies, 

 one on its back." 



While he was speaking a lioness wandered out 

 from the canon and up the opposite slope. She 

 was somewhere between six and nine hundred yards 

 away, and looked very tiny; but the binoculars 

 brought us up to her with a jump. Through them 

 she proved to be a good one. She was not at all 

 hurried, but paused from time to time to yawn and 

 look about her. After a short interval another, 

 also a lioness, followed in her footsteps. She too 

 had climbed well clear when a third, probably a 

 full-grown but still immature lion, came out, and 

 after him the fourth. 



"You were right" we told Memba Sasa, "there 

 are your four." 



But while we watched a fifth, again at the spaced 

 interval, this time a maned lion, clambered leisurely 

 up in the wake of his family; and after him another, 

 and another, and yet another! We gasped, and sat 

 .down the better to steady our glasses with our 

 knees. There seemed no end to lions. They came 

 out of that apparently inexhaustible canon bed one 

 at a time, and at the same regular intervals; perhaps 

 twenty yards or so apart. It was almost as though 

 they were being released singly. Finally we had 

 fifteen in sight. 



187 



