MY FIRST LION 85 
base just showed movement to the naked eye, and through 
the glass I saw legs, tails, yellow flanks, and heads all pressed 
together, as that great cat family —the lord, his harem and 
their offspring — took their pleasure in the sun. The bushy 
screen that hid them from me was far too dense to permit of 
my shooting through it, even if the light were sufficient to 
enable me to draw a sight on any one lion in that huddled 
mass, which it was not, so my position was a tantalizing, and 
an also uncertain one. I was fully 200 yards from my 
game. ‘The wind was very light, and, as it is apt to be in 
the early morning, very treacherous. The little silvery 
spiral wreaths of dew smoke rose gently twisting in the air 
as the sun searched out the shaded grass under an over- 
hanging bough, and as they rose they drifted every way. 
I noticed them anxiously as I sat there, my heart I admit, 
beating fast. My gunbearers Dooda and Brownie, were 
greatly excited, and I at once made up my mind to pay no 
attention to their tugs and beseeching whisperings to right and 
left of me —tugs I say, for they were pulling me first one 
way then the other —but to do as I thought best myself. A 
choice had to be made and that right quickly. Here was the 
situation: the patch of thorn that shielded the lions from 
me, and through the thinning lower stems of which I could 
just make out their colour, but not their form, was about twenty 
yards across, and, as I said, two hundred yards away. From 
where we crouched, two narrow green aisles of open grass, 
only a few yards wide, passed on either side of it. As I sat 
I could command the one to my right, but not possibly the 
one to my left. I could from no point command both at the 
same time. Beyond these little bush lined avenues of grass 
there was more cover; and though it was quite open enough 
in many places to shoot through or shoot over, there would be 
little chance of a steady sitting shot, and that above every- 
thing was what I wanted to get at my first lion. Which way 
would the pack take? I thought hard and concluded to 
