240 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
for miles ahead of us, and my gun-bearers had somehow lagged 
behind and given the boy my rifle to carry. Both the cook 
and boy were in a most abject state of speechless terror, and 
could only gasp out ‘ Simba !’ but when they were able to speak, 
they told us that a lion had bounded out of the bush across the 
small open space we had shortly before passed and had chased 
them. With the yell we had heard the cook dropped the kettle 
with our precious supply of water, and the boy the rifle, and 
both ran after us screaming all the time, too afraid to look 
behind them to see whether the lion was following them or not. 
Hurrying back to the scene of their adventure, we found the 
kettle on the footpath, but the rifle was nowhere to be seen. 
However, one of the men soon found the lion lying in the 
shade of a bush within 15 yards of us, though for some little 
time I was unable to see it, until I looked along the man’s arm 
as he pointed at it. When I made it out, I saw it was crouch- 
ing flat on the ground facing us, but could not get a good view 
of its head, as there was a thick aloe sticking up just in front 
of it, and I could see little else but its eyes on either side of 
the stem. As my gun-bearers had not come up, I had nothing 
more powerful than a ‘44 Winchester 12-shot carbine, so I 
asked the Doctor to stand ready, told my boy to keep behind 
me with the shot-gun in case of a charge, and risked a shot 
at its head, when away it floundered out of the bush. As 
it leapt over a clump of aloes to the left I again fired, and it 
answered to the shot with a growl, and disappeared from sight. 
When I went up to see the effect of my first shot, which I 
found had gone through the aloe, one of the men discovered 
my rifle lying close to where the lion had been, having been 
carried thither by the lion from the place where it was dropped 
by the boy, a distance of 15 yards, and I had the mortification 
of finding that the brute had not only destroyed the cover, but 
had broken both triggers short off, twisted and broken the 
trigger-guard, and severely mauled the stock, from which it had 
taken a piece out. 
As this happened late in the afternoon, there was no 
