THE KATRIAWAR LION. 741 



was quite tmnoticeable to ordinary eyes. It was wonderful how 

 the men were able to make any progress at all, but they did do so 

 slowly but surely ; only one little bit of excitement did we have 

 when Hebat coming to a sudden halt pointed towards a large 

 clump of bamboos and whispered the word " Siivaz'" (lion) into 

 my ears ! With some difficulty I made out what had attracted his 

 attention, but this after all turned out to be a doe chital. After 

 keeping up the tracking for a good two hours without success, we 

 got into more open country. Down in a valley below us, we could 

 see a large banyan tree towering above its neighbours, and Hebat 

 at once declared that, if the lions were in the neighbourhood, we 

 should find them under that tree. To save time, he, I and 

 Kutchra made a bee line for it, leaving the others to follow up the 

 tracks. The lions were there sure enough ! As we cautiously 

 approached the tree, Hebat's keen eyes spotted them lying in some 

 coarse long grass at the foot of it, and of almost the same colour 

 as themselves. We could just make out the form of one of them, 

 but the others were certain to be somewhere near. The interven- 

 ing ground was quite open and devoid of jungle, but about 50 

 yards on our side of the banyan, stood a small mimosa bush. 

 Keeping this between us and the lions Hebat and I managed to 

 crawl up to it without attracting their attention, although the one 

 we could see was apparently quite wide-awake When, after a rest 

 of a few seconds to steady myself, I rose to my feet to fire, it 

 struck me that the animal we were stalking looked very much like 

 a lioness. I could not make out a mane, whereas the lion we had 

 seen on the top of the hill had an uncommonly good one. Hebat, 

 however, insisted I was mistaken, and as it was difficult to make 

 out much in the glare and the grass, 1 gave way to his greater 

 experience and fired with the 8-bore. She rolled over with the 

 shot ; there was no doubt about her sex now, I was right after all, 

 but she recovered herself immediately aud was off. With the left 

 barrel I rolled her over again, but she got to her feet once more, 

 and was out of sight before I could get in another shot. Then, 

 I heard several shots accompanied by excited shouts in the direc- 

 tion she had gone. Thinking some one was being mauled, I 

 re-loaded the 8-bore as I ran along and exchanging it for the 500 

 25 



