MY FIRST LION 89 
sank slowly from sight again. ‘There was just one instant’s 
pause, and out of the grass came the big forefeet and the tip 
of the tail. He was dead without a groan. I turned as 
quickly as I could to see what had become of the rest. 
I was only in time to fire at a large lioness as she made off in 
the grass. I missed her, and I did not care, to tell the truth. 
I had drunk deep just then, and was quite contented to let 
the whole family of them go. Had I not seen the great paws 
of the king himself stretched upward to the sky! My men 
ran to the ant hill and could count the troop as they crossed 
the distant rise of land. I went over and stood by my first 
lion. When they returned they told me that they had 
counted eight lionesses and half grown or three-quarter 
grown pups. He was a magnificent fellow indeed, very 
large and in fine condition with a quite first-class mane. As 
he lay dead, the tape passed from the tip of the nose to the 
tip of the tail gave him ten feet five inches; the stretched 
skin was twelve feet six inches. When our rejoicings were 
abated a little, Dooda remembered his jaw, and coming up 
to me with a rueful countenance said, “‘ But you do kill me.” 
T told him that next time he attempted to fire my rifle while 
he was my gunbearer I should hit him not with my elbow 
but with the stock of my rifle, as he would endanger all 
our lives. He never as it happened required another lesson, 
and really was a good hunter and brave man, but like 
most Somalis very excitable. Once afterward when he saw 
a lion in thick scrub suddenly he gripped my arm with so 
tense a grip that I could not use it for a moment, so later 
I said to him, “‘Dooda, I will show you the way to touch 
your man’s arm when you think you see something that he 
does not.”” And I gripped as fiercely as I could the inside of 
his arm where he had held mine. He danced, of course, 
with the pain, but admitted after that he deserved it. So the 
lion was skinned and brought to camp, and I heard for the 
first time that weird Somali chant which the Wakamba and 
