THE RIVER OF THE PLAINS. 13I 



him, for now he most considerately growls to show his whereabouts. You peer 

 into the dense bushes, but can see nothing, so follow the spoor again, only more 

 slowly and with greater caution, and with your rifle at full cock in front of you. 

 Presently sounds another deep growl, so near that it makes you start, and there 

 he is crouched under a bush not twenty yards off. As he tries to approach, you 

 notice how badly the first shot has hit him, for he cannot move quickly. He 

 raises his head to give another long reverberating growl, and taking the opportunity 

 you put a bullet into the root of his neck. He turns and rushes blindly through 

 the bush and is again lost to sight, but you can hear him struggling and beating 

 the ground not very far off. 



Advancing once more, you find he has gone but thirty yards and is now lying on 

 his side, for the last bullet has pierced his heart, whilst the first long-range lucky shot 

 hit him on the hip as he turned round to make off. He proves to be a tawny-maned 

 lion and a fine specimen in his prime, and after the first feeling of exultant triumph 

 is over you cannot help feeling sorry to have killed such a fine creature. 



I do not know why it should be so, but I always feel more regretful over a 

 stricken lion than I do over a buck. Perhaps it is that the killing of the latter is 

 such a necessary performance for the table, whilst there is really no reason at all 

 for the killing of the latter except that the sport is exhilarating. 



But to resume ; the same night you strike across another little pool, holding water 

 from yesterday's rain, but very shallow, and there you pitch camp, and the following 

 day you find, on trek, that the hot sun has dried up all other possible rainpools, so, 

 as you are still near the river, though divided from it by a belt of thorn several miles 

 thick, you decide to get your water there. On you march outside the thorn till, 

 taking advantage of a grassy fiord running in towards the river, you begin to 

 push through the thorny belt. Happily you come across rhino and hippo tracks 

 in plenty, so the work is not so arduous as it might have been. Still, there are 

 quite enough thorny branches left straggling across the path to employ ten hands 

 and arms to push them out of the way, were you blessed with that number. 



Presently you hear the old familiar puff ! puff ! puff ! of a rhino ; he has got your 

 wind ; will he come your way or not ? You wait anxiously, and are relieved to hear 

 the sound of his crashing through the bushes grow fainter and fainter, and finally die 

 away. Again you press onward, and again there is a puff ! puff ! puff ! but this time 

 supplemented by the crashing of loads hastily thrown down, and, before you quite 

 know what has happened, a rhino followed by a calf comes tearing past and down 

 the whole line of porters within three yards of them, and away into the bush. Going 

 back to see how much has been broken, you find your porters getting down from 



