98 THE LAND OF THE LION 
me once, when I might have finished the big wounded 
lioness (for the one shot high up and far back was an old 
lioness). But having only now one gunbearer, Brownie 
had to keep his eyes on the ground, and thus it was we came 
on the old lioness, her head very gray, and didn’t see her 
till what I had taken for a weather-worn tree stump van- 
ished with a loud, angry grunt from before me, and the 
chase was all on again. The band numbered nine, and, 
strangely enough, we never were sure that we saw a big lion 
init. They never let us come among them as did the other 
band the day before. But persistently they kept from one hun- 
dred to three hundred yards in front. When we first drew 
up to the spot where the two had been hit, we might, of 
course, have walked in among them then, but grass and 
thick bushes made it impossible. ‘To do so would have 
led to our instantly being charged, by how many I don’t 
know (but several were growling very close), and in such 
cover you could not see a crouching lion at gun-barrel’s 
length. After that the band would not let us near till 
we came to some heavily weoded cover. On its edge 
they would make another stand and growl again. Our 
waiting tactics were then repeated, and when the grunting 
sounded farther on, we moved in on the track. I should 
here say that the noise the lions made when they were, as 
it were, standing us off, was a different, quite different, 
sound from that they made among themselves as they trotted 
away together. This last, though not like their common 
night-call, could be heard at some distance, while the low 
snarl they gave when crouching in the grass, though not at 
all a loud noise, was always to me a horrid, blood-curdling 
sort of thing, but did not seem to carry any distance. Every 
ant hill we came to, rising out of the long grass, every hard 
ridge we had to cross, I hoped would give me a chance 
but the afternoon wore on, and try as we might there seemed 
no way of coming up to them. Once we counted the lot, 
