64 : BIG GAME SHOOTING 
made fast to the leathern rope, or ‘trek tow,’ by which they draw 
the waggon, each pair—there were five to each waggon—to their 
own yoke in the order they worked in the team, so that they 
-were ready and in right position for inspanning in the morning. 
We were lying on this occasion by a large Wangketsi village, 
and the cattle had been kraaled rather to prevent them getting 
mixed with those of the Wangketsi, as they were taken out to 
graze at sunrise, than from any apprehension of an attack. 
The three waggons were drawn up as usual on one side of the 
enclosure, and the Kafirs were by their fires on the other. I 
was asleep, but was roused by shouts, the discharge of a 
musket, and the sudden rush of our pack of dogs. I found a 
lion had sprung over a weak place in the thorn fence on to the 
back of an ox, and, scared by the shouting, had jumped back 
again the same way. According to tradition I know the ox 
ought to have been in his mouth, but it wasn’t. A lion will 
drag an ox by the nape of its neck anywhere, but he can’t 
carry it, much less jump a 6-foot hedge with it in his jaws. 
Tt was quite dark, but by the gleam of the fires the men, 
aroused by the panic of the oxen, caught sight of him, and 
one of the Hottentot drivers had taken a flying shot. The 
dogs pressed hard upon him ; directly he gained the cover he 
stood to bay. I suppose the poor things got hampered in the 
bush, for-presently two crawled up to us mangled and dying. 
The hubbub went on for some minutes, and then the lion, 
frightened probably by the firing and yelling—we could give 
no other -aid to our allies—broke bay, and ten dogs returned 
exclusive of the two that had come in to die; two were 
still missing—one of them a brindled bull terrier, which we all 
knew must one day come to grief, for he was a most reckless, 
determined brute, game to go in to anything. A few days 
before, feeling offended at a puff adder—the worst of the Cape 
snakes-—hissing at him, he had seized it, and notwithstanding 
the snake striking him on the head with its fangs, had stuck 
to and killed it. His head swelled to an imtnense size, but 
he pulled through and recovered. With day we went to the 
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