182 THE LAND OF THE LION 
dreadfully. His fine condition will save his life, but I hear 
his left arm is doomed. 
Two men in the last three months have lost an arm, 
and almost their lives, riding lions. In both cases the 
same mistake was made. ‘They pressed the beast too 
closely. No horse can turn or stop as cana cat. I have 
seen a cheetah I was “riding’? — an animal very much 
faster than any lion, and that can easily outlast one — 
actually stop in its very stride. It was as though its claws 
were glued to the earth. It did not seem possible that 
such a sudden halt could be called, by anything that ran. 
Nor can any other beast show the desperate speed of a cat 
for a few yards’ distance. Mr. Percivale, the game warden 
of the Protectorate, who has probably ridden more lions 
than any man in the country, tells me that he, though well 
mounted, was once almost pulled down by a lion that he 
had ridden into cover. He, too, on that occasion, came 
too close, the lion for some reason or other, dispensed with 
all the usual preliminaries and rushed at him. He turned 
his horse as quickly as he could and rode for his life. He 
had quite fifty yards start, and yet he believes that, had he 
not fired his heavy revolver into the face of the lion when 
it was almost on his horse’s hind quarters, both he and 
it would have been pulled down. Mr. Percivale was alone. 
There was no other horse or hunter near to divide the 
lion’s attention — this, perhaps, may account for his very 
unusually rapid and deadly attack. 
Hoey was attacked by three lionesses, near the Rock. 
The only provocation he had given them was, that he had 
shot two hours before, the lion of the band. He was riding 
back to his camp unarmed, having left his rifle with his 
gunbearer, who was skinning the lion he had killed. The 
three saw him, from a distance of quite two hundred yards, 
and pressed him hard, for a quarter of a mile. He was rid- 
ing the same fast mule that I rode, and so distanced them. 
ee tes oS, Eo oh 
