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THE LION 241 
prospect of reaching water that night, so I gave orders to pitch 
camp, and not wishing to build a ‘ boma,’ which was hardly 
necessary, was anxious to satisfy myself as to whether the lion 
was wounded, since a beast that dared to attack in daylight 
might prove an unpleasant neighbour during the night if not 
already wounded, more especially as we had several donkeys 
with us. When the gun-bearers came up I took my 12-bore 
Paradox, and, followed by the Doctor, entered the bush, and was 
flicking the sharp points off the aloes with a knife, never thinking 
for a moment that ‘ John Bounder’ was close at hand. After 
going a few yards we found a thick drop of blood on a leaf, 
and I felt fairly satisfied that he would give us no further 
trouble during the night. However, as there was still an hour 
or so of daylight we decided to go on a little further, and I was 
still flicking off the aloe points and talking to the Doctor, when 
we came to a small green bush, which I took the precaution of 
peeping round before advancing. There lay the lion crouched 
flat on the ground, within seven feet of me, with his head 
between his paws. 
The lion was unfortunately on my right, so that I could 
not fire except from my left shoulder, a shot which I did not 
care to risk, any more than I cared to walk backwards and 
expose the whole of my body at such close quarters before I 
could get a sufficiently good view to enable me to shoot from my 
right shoulder. Stepping back, I whispered to the Doctor that 
the lion was quite close, and asked him to stand ready, whilst I 
crept back to try and get a better view of it from another point, 
- but by the time I had struggled through a dense clump of aloes 
__ the beast had slunk away under the shade of a black bush two 
___ or three yards off, and I could only see the tip of its tail twitch- 
_ ing from side to side. It was quite impossible to make out which 
way the lion’s body lay, even with binoculars, and a shot fired at 
; the place where I thought and hoped it might be had no effect. 
This made the beast move off to more favourable ground, and 
after a short hunt one of my gun-bearers saw it lying under a 
_ tree ina small opening. At the same moment that I saw the 
I. R 
