224 THE MAN-EATERS OF TSAVO CHAP, 
beaters came running up shouting with joy ; and 
although I warned them to be careful, as the two 
lionesses were probably still close at hand, they did 
not seem to care in the slightest and in a twinkling 
had the dead lion lifted from the reeds on to the dry 
bank. Before I allowed anything further to be done, 
however, I had the patch of rushes thoroughly 
beaten out: but as no traces of the lionesses could 
be found, we commenced to skin my fine trophy. 
When this was about half done, I decided to let 
Mahina finish the operation, while I went on ahead 
to try my luck either with more lions or with any 
other game that might come my way. I followed 
up the river almost to its source, but no more lions 
crossed my path. Once indeed I felt convinced 
that I saw one, and gave chase to it with all my 
might as it rushed through the long grass: but a 
nearer view showed me nothing more than a huge 
wart-hog. As I wanted the tusks, which I noticed 
were very fine ones, I fired but only badly hipped 
him: so I ran up as fast as I could and at ten 
yards fired again. This time I missed him entirely, 
and was puzzled to account for my failure until I 
looked at my back sight and found that by some 
accident it had got raised and that I had the 200- 
yards sight up. On rectifying this, another shot 
quickly put the wounded animal out of pain. 
Still my day’s sport was not yet over. While 
ee 
