MY FIRST LION 87 



slowly, casually, out of the bosom of his family he came. 

 And the lion of my dreams he seemed. Big and black with 

 no common blackness, surely the true king of that wild and 

 beautiful place. Slowly on and on, till in the middle of the 

 green grassy aisle he stood, the sun shining full on his mag- 

 nificent coat, and the dark rich low hanging mane that 

 covered his shoulders. Then slowly, carelessly, he turned, 

 his broad black head toward me and sniffed the tainted air 

 that drifted down to him over the dewy grass. I had kept 

 my "fly in the water" and my chance had come at last. 

 Who shall attempt to describe the feelings of the man who 

 after long waiting, when the golden chance comes to him, 

 knows as he steadily presses the yielding trigger home, that 

 he is "on!" That triumphant instant may be the result 

 of some dark survival of barbarism within him : all the same 

 it is "living!" It is glorious! It was mine, and is part of 

 me forever. 



A deep grunting roar answered the shot, and quickly he 

 swung round his body toward where it came from. As 

 he did so I fired very quickly again, just as fast as I could 

 move my Mauser's bolt. 



Then he saw me, and with another deep grunt came 

 straight for where I sat with great long bounds. When I 

 say he roared to the shot, I do not mean that he made any 

 sound at all comparable to that first terrible roar that the 

 lion that mauled Momba made when he charged in on the 

 men. None of our party ever heard any lion deliver so 

 loud and awe-inspiring a signal of onset. Several other 

 lions that I shot later on just growled angrily as they came 

 forward, a nasty enough sound for any one. But that first 

 dying beast made more noise than all of them put together. 

 The distance from where I sat to where the lion stood I 

 measured carefully afterward. It was one hundred and 

 seventy yards; and now he came one hundred and twenty 

 of them, faster than I could have believed it possible for any 



