Wounded Lion Lost 189 



quiver. . . . All is over. The wounded lion groans 

 once or twice on the plain before us, and the remainder 

 of the night passes without other incident. A hyena 

 and one or two antelopes approach, but all scamper 

 away mad with fear as soon as they scent the lion. 

 The hyena returns shortly afterwards ; but, as I 

 have no desire that it should spoil the magnificent 

 skin which is there, that of a maneless male, I have 

 the light projected on to it, and send it a bullet which 

 wounds it, I believe, in the stomach. The hyena 

 turns on itself like a dog trying to catch its tail, 

 uttering howls and grunts of mingled rage or pain, 

 and makes off, every now and then waltzing in the 

 very comical manner described. 



As soon as it is daylight Bertrand, who has heard 

 my rifle-shots, sends my other hunters and men as 

 upon the last occasion, lest there should be an 

 animal to carry back. We perceive that the lion 

 which has made off is the big solitary one whose 

 spoors we have noticed more than once. Seriously 

 wounded, it has made many stoppages on the plain 

 and left small pools of blood everywhere ; but the 

 whole morning is taken up in pursuing it, and a 

 long, perilous pursuit it is, because its traces on the 

 blackened earth are hardly perceptible, and only 

 isolated drops of blood appear on plants or bushes. 

 My men have climbed more than fifty trees in bushy 

 places in the neighbourhood to look round. At last 

 we lose the track completely ; the hemorrhage seems 

 to have stopped, which often happens when a clot of 

 blood naturally closes a wound. We abandon the 



