MY FIRST LION 99 
nine, and could see the two wounded ones lagging behind. 
But these kept after the others, and though the blood signs 
never ceased, they kept their strength. 
Just as I was thinking of giving it up, for my troublesome 
knee was hanging out signs of distress, and I had been 
going as hard as I could, my nerves pretty well strung up, 
for more than four hours since I had wounded the two, 
we came to a heavy bit of cover that bordered a small 
stream running between steep rocky banks, and strangely 
enough, before entering this stronghold (where they would 
have been quite safe from me), the whole band stopped and 
looked back. ‘The halt was so very brief that I had no time 
even to take a hasty shot. Before I could struggle out of the 
long grass I was in, and find a place from which I could 
see to shoot, they were gone, or rather eight lions had passed 
into the shade. Brownie had counted them. They were 
too far off for me to do so. What of the two wounded? 
He said they had not come in sight yet. As I waited one 
of them came slowly out of the grass and stood, looking very 
tired, just for an instant. I fortunately shot it dead. The 
big lioness, as we saw by following her spoor, crawled 
cunningly down a little depression into the dark thicket by 
the stream, and so was lost to us. It seems poor sort of 
work, when you try to tell accurately what happened, to 
follow ten lions from early morning to late afternoon, and 
only get one. All I can say is that, taking it all and all, 
I had the best hunting day I ever had in my life. I might 
have fired almost at random on lions moving in concealing 
grass, as | might even more frequently have done during the 
hour or so on the day before when the band was scattered 
all round me, and when at times several were within a few 
yards, but, both for the sake of the lions and for our own, 
I am sure, to do so would have been a grave mistake. 
I have no conscience about killing lions. They are magni- 
ficent cats, but dangerous and cruel above all others 
