CHAP. v. LIONS. 273 



wood on both the fires, so that in a few minutes the whole 

 encampment was lighted up, and all the men came out. 

 When the silence had continued several minutes, and 

 while I was peering through the hedge with a torch to 

 try and see something of the animal, which we fancied 

 was dead, we heard a voice out of the darkness asking to 

 be let in, and on removing the bushes that closed the 

 entrance through the fence we found a hunter called Dick 

 who, having been forced to have a private camp of his 

 own on account of an accusation of witchcraft from his 

 brother hunters, had had the wonderful pluck to leave it 

 when he heard the shot and the roaring of the animal 

 and come to ours in the dark, running the risk of meeting 

 the wounded lioness. It was a thing I certainly should 

 not have dared to do, and one of the pluckiest I ever 

 heard of. 



Our people, now fancying that the animal must be 

 dead, struck up a triumphant hunting-song, but it had 

 hardly broken the stillness before it was silenced by a 

 deep growl close at hand, several of which, though grow- 

 ing fainter and fainter, and mingled with a sort of choking 

 cough, were uttered in the next half hour. Daylight soon 

 after broke, and then we sallied out and found it not ten 

 yards off, stone dead. The shot had been a most fortunate 

 one, the ball having gone in between the shoulder and 

 the chest, and come out on the other side of the same 

 shoulder, merely inflicting what appeared at first sight to 

 be a slight flesh wound, though some large artery must 

 have been cut as she had bled to death. She was a large 

 gaunt lioness, reduced by illness and starvation to a mere 

 skeleton, and evidently unable to procure food in any way 



s 



