THE LION 241 



prospect of reaching water that night, so I gave orders to pitch 

 camp, and not wishing to build a ' boma,' which was hardly 

 necessary, was anxious to satisfy myself as to whether the lion 

 was wounded, since a beast that dared to attack in daylight 

 might prove an unpleasant neighbour during the night if not 

 already wounded, more especially as we had several donkeys 

 with us. When the gun-bearers came up I took my 12 -bore 

 Paradox, and, followed by the Doctor, entered the bush, and was 

 flicking the sharp points off the aloes with a knife, never thinking 

 for a moment that ' John Bounder' was close at hand. After 

 going a few yards we found a thick drop of blood on a leaf, 

 and I felt fairly satisfied that he would give us no further 

 trouble during the night. However, as there was still an hour 

 or so of daylight we decided to go on a little further, and I was 

 still flicking off the aloe points and talking to the Doctor, when 

 we came to a small green bush, which I took the precaution of 

 peeping round before advancing. There lay the lion crouched 

 flat on the ground, within seven feet of me, with his head 

 between his paws. 



The lion was unfortunately on my right, so that I could 

 not fire except from my left shoulder, a shot which I did not 

 care to risk, any more than I cared to walk backwards and 

 expose the whole of my body at such close quarters before I 

 could get a sufficiently good view to enable me to shoot from my 

 right shoulder. Stepping back, I whispered to the Doctor that 

 the lion was quite close, and asked him to stand ready, whilst I 

 crept back to try and get a better view of it from another point, 

 but by the time I had struggled through a dense clump of aloes 

 the beast had slunk away under the shade of a black bush two 

 or three yards off, and I could only see the tip of its tail twitch- 

 ing from side to side. It was quite impossible to make out which 

 way the lion's body lay, even with binoculars, and a shot fired at 

 the place where I thought and hoped it might be had no effect. 

 This made the beast move off to more favourable ground, and 

 after a short hunt one of my gun-bearers saw it lying under a 

 tree in a small opening. At the same moment that I saw the 



I. R 



