AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



foresight was exactly on the centre of his chest as I pressed 

 the trigger, and the bullet went as true as if the place had 

 been plotted with dividers. The blow brought him up all 

 standing, and he fell forward on his head. The soft-nosed 

 Winchester bullet had gone straight through the chest 

 cavity, smashing the lungs and the big blood-vessels of the 

 heart. Painfully he recovered his feet, and tried to come 

 on, his ferocious courage holding out to the last; but he 

 staggered, and turned from side to side, unable to stand 

 firmly, still less to advance at a faster pace than a walk. 

 He had not ten seconds to live; but it is a sound principle 

 to take no chances with lions. Tarlton hit him with his 

 second bullet, probably in the shoulder; and with my next 

 shot I broke his neck. I had stopped him when he was 

 still a hundred yards away; and certainly no finer sight 

 could be imagined than that of this great maned lion as he 

 charged. Kermit gleefully joined us as we walked up to 

 the body; only one of our followers had been able to keep 

 up with him on his two-miles run. He had had a fine view 

 of the charge, from one side, as he ran up, still three hun- 

 dred yards distant; he could see all the muscles play as the 

 lion galloped in, and then everything relax as he fell to the 

 shock of my bullet. 



The lion was a big old male, still in his prime. Between 

 uprights his length was nine feet four inches, and his weight 

 four hundred and ten pounds, for he was not fat. We 

 skinned him and started for camp, which we reached after 

 dark. There was a thunder-storm in the south-west, and 

 in the red sunset that burned behind us the rain clouds 

 turned to many gorgeous hues. Then daylight failed, the 

 clouds cleared, and, as we made our way across the form- 

 less plain, the half moon hung high overhead, strange stars 

 shone in the brilliant heavens, and the Southern Cross lay 

 radiant above the sky-line. 



Our next camp was pitched on a stony plain, by a 

 winding stream-bed still containing an occasional rush- 

 fringed pool of muddy water, fouled by the herds and flocks 



