TSAVO REVISITED 



afterwards became, and they therefore lay down to 

 sleep anywhere in the open quite fearlessly. One 

 evening the unfortunate man whose end was so 

 near went to rest, with some companions, in an 

 empty truck which was standing on a siding. There 

 was not room in the truck for all the workers, so 

 some of them slept on the top of a pile of wooden 

 sleepers that had been made at the side of the line 

 at this place; and among these was the platelayer 

 who described the occurrence to me. 



He told me that as he lay awake in the waning 

 moonlight he was startled by seeing a lion creep 

 stealthily out of the undergrowth and stalk in silence 

 towards the truck where his companions slept. 

 He immediately shouted out, "Beware, brothers, a 

 lion is coming," but on hearing the cry the brute 

 hid himself in the shadow with the agility and 

 silence of a cat, and when the men craned their 

 necks for a view of him, he was nowhere to be 

 seen. There happened to be a goods train stand- 

 ing on the siding for the night, and the lion 

 now ran down the full length of this under the 

 wagons, and a few minutes later was seen staring 

 with glowing eyes into the guard's van, in which at 

 the time there lay, rolled up in a blanket, an 

 engineer named Ogilvy who was an invalid on his 

 way to the coast for change of air. 



Poor Ogilvy little dreamed of his peril that night. 



