244 LARGE GAME. chap. v. 



hand. As our eyes met he opened his great red mouth 

 to its fullest extent, showing me every one of his im- 

 mense snowy fangs. I don't know why he did so." I 

 suggested ' to yawn.' " No, not that; I thought to eat me, 

 but perhaps it was only to express his astonishment by a 

 roar ; any way I had no time to think about it then, and, 

 on the impulse of the moment, I thrust the gun-barrel 

 right in, pulled the trigger, and ran away as hard as I 

 could, and, if I hadn't met you, I don't know when I 

 should have stopped, for I was so frightened that I only 

 thought of running, though I must have passed plenty of 

 trees where I should have been safe enough." 



After a great deal of hesitation on his part I persuaded 

 him to return — he was nearly a mile already from the 

 spot — and show me where it had happened, and after a 

 most cautious search in the jungle, for a wounded lion in 

 such cover is not an animal to be trifled with, he whispered 

 to me that we were not more than a few yards from where 

 he had been standing, and there being a tree handy we 

 both climbed up so as to overlook and examine the ground, 

 and there, lying in its thorny-cactus bed, a whole bush of 

 which it had smashed in its last agonies, we saw the tawny 

 body of a male lion. A shout or two to make sure that 

 it was indeed dead, and we approached it, finding that 

 the ball, entering at the roof of the mouth, had passed 

 through the brain, and that death must have been almost 

 momentary. 



My hunter, changing at once from the extreme of fear 

 to that of joy, immediately performed a solo dance round 

 the carcase, as oblivious from the one cause as he had 

 before been from the other of the innumerable poisonous 



