14 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



single, black-powder rifle in my hands, and a lion 

 watching me within sixty yards, it didn't look quite 

 like a walk-over ! 



I felt it would be cutting it too fine to aim 

 between the brute's eyes, but as the growling in- 

 creased and the tail jerked up over the grass I 

 had to do something. 



So I made a guess for the shoulder, and with 

 the report of the weapon a violent agitation of the 

 grass, above which I got a glimpse of clutching paws 

 and a whisking tail, assured me that my shot had 

 been a good one. But this was only the first 

 round, as I realized when I saw an indistinct mass 

 with a tail at one end disappear in the larger 

 patch of bush. What next? It was incumbent on 

 me to make the next move, and to make it quickly, 

 if I would save the little light now left. Still 

 believing this last lion was the young male first 

 wounded, I repeated my former tactics, keeping to 

 the open glade, skirting the bush, and looking for 

 blood-spoor leaving it. Thus I actually crossed the 

 blood-spoor of the lion where he had left his first 

 cover and entered the larger bush. I was on the 

 alert, as I thought the lioness might be somewhere 

 near at hand, and thus I worked my way round 

 a projecting tongue of bush only to find my way 

 barred by a narrow but very dense strip of bush, 

 which divided the large patch (into which both lion 

 and lioness had gone) from another of equal size. 

 The shape of the two bushes and the connecting strip 

 was, in fact, roughly that of a dumb-bell. As I 

 approached the narrow strip a large thorn-tree, de- 

 nuded of bark and looming white in the poor light, 



