56 : BIG GAME SHOOTING 
soaking before cooking, and loses much of its flavour, but it 
holds body and soul together. 
Leaving the valley and rocky hills of the Ba-Katla, we 
moved slowly onwards towards the Ba-Wangketsi ; before reach- 
ing them, an event occurred which coloured my whole African 
life, and will colour my life as long as I live. It is no story 
of big game, and perhaps ought not to find a place in these 
pages ; but it is so bound up with all my shooting, all my plea- 
sure in Africa, that I would ask to be forgiven for telling it. I 
should feel a traitor to the memory ofa dead friend if I did not. 
We were trekking through some low sand-hills covered 
with scrub, when three lions crossed about fifty yards ahead. of 
the oxen. Snatching up a gun, I jumped from the waggon, 
calling upon someone to follow me with a heavy rifle which 
was always kept loaded as a reserve battery. I pressed so 
closely on the leisurely retreating trio that the largest stopped 
- short. I squatted, intending to take his shoulder as he turned, 
looked round for my second gun, and heard the bearer, who 
was close to me, whisper. in Dutch, ‘You can get nearer by’ 
the ant-hill.’ The move lost me the lion, as he broke away 
after his companions; and then for the first time I took 
notice of the cool, tall, handsome lad who had offered me 
advice, and recognised in him at once the stuff to make a 
henchman of. From that day forth he was my ae -hand 
man in the field, and never failed me. 
John Thomas was an Africander, born at the Cape, of 
parents probably slaves ; but as a grand specimen of man- 
hood, good nature, faithfulness, and cheerful endurance, I 
never met his equal, white or black. Plucky to a fault, he was 
the least quarrelsome of men, the life and light of our camp 
fires, and the pet of the Kafirs, who seemed at once to under- 
stand his quiet unpretending nature, and always made their 
requests to me through ‘bono Johnny.’ To tell his good 
deeds through a five years’ wandering would very often be to 
show up my own faults ; let it be enough to say that he was a 
perfect servant to a very imperfect master, who, now that his 
