240 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



for miles ahead of us, and my gun -bearers had somehow lagged 

 behind and given the boy my rifle to carry. Both the cook 

 and boy were in a most abject state of speechless terror, and 

 could only gasp out ' Simba ! ' but when they were able to speak, 

 they told us that a lion had bounded out of the bush across the 

 small open space we had shortly before passed and had chased 

 them. With the yell we had heard the cook dropped the kettle 

 with our precious supply of water, and the boy the rifle, and 

 both ran after us screaming all the time, too afraid to look 

 behind them to see whether the lion was following them or not. 

 Hurrying back to the scene of their adventure, we found the 

 kettle on the footpath, but the rifle was nowhere to be seen. 

 However, one of the men soon found the lion lying in the 

 shade of a bush within 15 yards of us, though for some little 

 time I was unable to see it, until ! looked along the man's arm 

 as he pointed at it. When I made it out, I saw it was crouch- 

 ing flat on the ground facing us, but could not get a good view 

 of its head, as there was a thick aloe sticking up just in front 

 of it, and I could see little else but its eyes on either side of 

 the stem. As my gun-bearers had not come up, I had nothing 

 more powerful than a '44 Winchester i2-shot carbine, so I 

 asked the Doctor to stand ready, told my boy to keep behind 

 me with the shot-gun in case of a charge, and risked a shot 

 at its head, when away it floundered out of the bush. As 

 it leapt over a clump of aloes to the left I again fired, and it 

 answered to the shot with a growl, and disappeared from sight. 

 When I went up to see the effect of my first shot, which I 

 found had gone through the aloe, one of the men discovered 

 my rifle lying close to where the lion had been, having been 

 carried thither by the lion from the place where it was dropped 

 by the boy, a distance of 1 5 yards, and I had the mortification 

 of finding that the brute had not only destroyed the cover, but 

 had broken both triggers short off, twisted and broken the 

 trigger-guard, and severely mauled the stock, from which it had 

 taken a piece out. 



As this happened late in the afternoon, there was no 



