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3 
THE LION 247 
Not knowing whether she was dead or not, or whether she 
was still behind the zebra, I listened for some time, but could 
hear nothing on account of the buzzing of swarms of large 
red-headed bluebottle flies, and then crawled forward very 
cautiously to the carcase, but found she had gone. As there 
was a considerable amount of blood about, I lost no time 
in following her. For a long time the lion stuck to his mate, 
but finally left her, and went off by himself, after being harassed 
and kept constantly on the move, which was in all probability 
distasteful to him after his feed. From 12.30 to 5.30, most 
of the time on my hands and knees owing to the denseness of 
the bush, I followed the lioness, and kept putting her up with 
a low growl every 100 yards or so ; but I only once saw her— 
a mere glimpse when she was on the move and about 20 yards 
off—as she kept down wind nearly the whole time, and never 
allowed me to come near enough to see her well, but slunk away 
with a low growl. Finally it became too dark to see anything, 
so I had to abandon the hunt for that day. 
Next morning I was back at daylight; and visited a small 
water-hole just outside the bush, close to where I had left her, 
and found from her spoor and faint traces of blood that she 
had been there to drink during the night. She had afterwards 
re-entered the bush and was lying down just inside, but was 
disturbed by our talking, as we heard her growl and move off. 
She must then have skirted along just inside the edge of the 
bush, for whilst we were consulting as to the best means of 
following her up, or whether we should attempt to drive her 
out, she left the covert some 300 yards off on our side, and went 
limping away across a small tongue of open ground towards a 
narrow strip of bush, which she entered. Hurrying round with 
my gun-bearers in a wide circuit to the other side, I was just 
in time to see her come to the edge of the bush, but at the 
same time she saw me, and lay down facing me, with her head 
well raised. This gave me a capital chance ; a shot in the 
chest rendered her iors de combat, and another at close quarters 
finished her off. The Express bullet of the day before had 
