244 THE MAN-EATERS OF TSAVO CHAP. 



manage a day off quite easily. So we made the 

 usual preparations for a day's absence from camp 

 filled our water-bottles with tea, put a loaf of bread 

 and a tin of sardines in our haversacks, looked care- 

 fully to our rifles and ammunition, and warned the 

 "boys" who were to accompany us as beaters to be 

 ready before dawn. I decided to make a very 

 early start, as I knew that the most likely place for 

 lions lay some distance away, and I wanted to get 

 there if possible by daybreak. We should thus 

 have a better chance of catching one of the lords 

 of the plain as he returned from his nightly 

 depredations to the kindly shelter of the tall grass 

 and rushes which fringed the banks of the river. 

 We therefore retired to rest early, and just as I was 

 dozing off to sleep, one of my Indian servants, 

 Roshan Khan, put his head through the slit at my 

 tent door and asked leave to accompany the " Sahibs" 

 in the morning so that he might see what shikar 

 (hunting) was like. This request I sleepily granted, 

 thinking that it could make little difference whether 

 he came with us or stayed behind in camp. As 

 things turned out, however, it made all the differ- 

 ence in the world, for if he had not accompanied 

 us, my shikar would in all probability have ended 

 disastrously next day. He was a very dusky- 

 coloured young Pathan about twenty years of age, 

 lithe and active, and honest and pleasant-looking, 



