FIRST GLIMPSE OF A WILD LION 95 



sprang up and the second shot stretched him out. 

 He was still alive when I came up to him, and a 

 small bullet was fired into the base of his brain to 

 reduce the danger of a final charge. 



Old hunters always caution one about approach- 

 ing a dying lion, for often the beast musters up 

 unexpected vitalily, makes a final charge, kills some- 

 body, and then dies happy. So we waited a few 

 feet away until the last quiver of his sides had 

 passed. One of the boys pulled his tail and shook 

 him, but there was no sign of life. He was extinct. 



A new danger now threatened. The grass fire 

 that the second gunbearer had started was sweep- 

 ing the prairie, fanned by a strong wind, and 

 there seemed to be not only the danger of abandon- 

 ing the lion, but of being forced to flee before the 

 flames. So we fell to work beating out the nearest 

 fires, and trusted that a shifting of the wind would 

 send the course of the flames in another direction. 



It was now four o'clock. We were nine miles 

 from camp and food, and we knew that at six 

 o'clock darkness would suddenly descend, leaving 

 us out in a rhino-infested country, far from camp. 

 The water was nearly gone and the general outlook 

 was far from pleasing. 



The gunbearers skinned the lion. My first shot 

 had struck one of his back teeth, breaking it 

 squarely off, and then passed through the fleshy 

 part of the neck. It was a wound that would 

 startle, but not kill. The second shot had hit him 

 between the eyes, but had glanced off the skull, 



