THE STORY OF AN OUTING 



but still that tawny streak gliding though the grass was 

 distinctly visible. I covered it with my gun and, swing- 

 ing well to the fore end of it, fired. He went down in a 

 heap and was up in an instant and faced me with a roar, 

 head erect, mane bristling, and tail vibrant. When he 

 roared another lion to the right turned at bay and 

 roared also, and they kept up a continual growling. 

 My prayers were answered. The lions were escaping in 

 parallel lines about forty yards apart, and fortunately I 

 had come up about midway between them. I never 

 heard a lion outside a zoo before, and their conversation 

 is surely impressive snarling, growling, threatening, I 

 hardly know how to describe it; it was incessant while 

 it lasted. I never took my eyes from the first lion nor 

 my gun from my face, it being automatic. Towering 

 up in all his majesty, his neck afforded a splendid mark, 

 and I broke it with the second shot; the first had gone 

 through his vitals and broken the opposite shoulder and 

 would have been fatal, of course, after a little time. I 

 turned to the other, sixty to seventy yards distant, 

 towering well above the grass directly facing me; with 

 distended mane, swishing his tail and fiercely growling, 

 he made himself as warlike as possible. I had three 

 cartridges in my magazine; I decided to give him a fatal 

 shot in the breast with the first one, and if he charged 

 depend upon the other two to break some of his on-com- 

 ing bones. Only a single shot was needed; it entered 

 the breast a trifle high^ traversed the lumbar regions, and 

 lodged in the backbone, back of the pelvis, almost to the 

 tail. He fell and never moved. A lion's roar has a deep, 

 hollow, hark-from-the-tomb tone and quality that is very 

 penetra ting andcarries a wonderful distance across country. 



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