Sporting Trips of a Subaltern 



made a clean bolt of it with the usual result the 

 lion turned on him, bowled him over, and caught 

 him by the leg. Macdonald was unable to shoot 

 as lion and man were too much mixed up. He 

 accordingly ran up and belaboured the lion 

 till he turned, and then shot him dead a per- 

 formance that reflects great credit, but not on 

 Warsama. He afterwards became one of the 

 Mullah's chief advisers, and he may have had 

 some scheme for securing our rifles for the sub- 

 sequent rising. Anyway, we were well rid of him. 

 He was succeeded by one, Abdi Adan, and though 

 another day had been wasted by this jostling, we 

 were sick of waiting, and getting out of Berbera 

 at 5.15 p.m., made twelve miles, and camped at 

 Chefto though why it was Chefto I couldn't say, 

 as there were no houses or anything to distinguish 

 it, only sand and thorn-bush, perfectly flat, and 

 stony over the sand. My bed had to be left 

 behind, as there were so few camels, most of 

 which were laden with rice and dates for the men, 

 and water-casks. In the end we got through with 

 only three or four more camels, making about 

 thirty in all, I think, as our consumption of pro- 

 visions, both ours and the men's, about kept pace 

 with the extra loads of heads, skins, etc. 



It may be of interest to note down the full 

 strength of our caravan at starting. The 

 " duplicate " men were to enable us to separate 



94 



