70 PEACE: LION HUNTING 



see how many lions had gone on, and they, after 

 investigating for some time, held up their fingers 

 and showed me that two lions only had passed. 



When Tatello and the remaining boys arrived, 

 we held a discussion. I told Tatello that as there 

 were only two lion tracks here, I thought they 

 must have missed the track of the wounded Hon 

 during the morning, and that he was perhaps 

 lying dead a long way back in the bush. This 

 Tatello had hardly begun vehemently to repudiate, 

 when a noise like the squalling of a huge angry 

 tom-cat brought the discussion to an abrupt end. 

 The noise came from the lion himself, and, stuck 

 between us and the advancing fire, he was clearly 

 in a very angry and perhaps excusably bad tem- 

 per. Immediately there was a wild hullabaloo and 

 a general rush amongst my boys, and in very much 

 less time than it takes to tell I found myself alone. 



Thinking the wounded lion was following along 

 the spoor in the same direction the lionesses had 

 taken, I quickly got about a dozen yards to the 

 right of the track. This left a fairly clear view 

 to my left, and there I waited, kneeling behind a 

 stump and bit of bush. The boys had rushed 

 away to the edge of the old lands and had climbed 

 into the trees ; though, in fairness it must be 

 mentioned, one of them stopped and ran a few 

 yards back, touching me on the shoulder and 

 saying something before hastening to rejoin the 

 others. What he said I do not know, but I suppose 

 it was something in the way of a warning. 



