742 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



express as being the lighter weapon, soon found myself in the 

 middle of all the excitement. I had only time, however, to see the 

 lioness growling ominously at the foot of a tree, and on the point 

 of charging a passaeta or village policeman, who was doing his 

 best to fire off a rusty old matchlock at her. I ran up, he stepped 

 aside, and taking his place, I fired at her chest ; but I was the 

 reverse of steady from running and my ball, as I afterwards as- 

 certained, only struck her in the muscles of her shoulder. She 

 did not wait for more, but charged at once with the usual short 

 angry cough — they cannot be called roars. I kept her covered 

 with my rifle as she came on and gave her the contents of the 

 left barrel when she was about twenty paces off. I aimed at her 

 head and by a fluke the bullet went true and effectually doubled 

 her up. However I did not realize this at the moment, for immedi- 

 ately after firing I turned round for my other gun, when to my hor- 

 ror, I saw my man Kutchra running away with it. It is needless 

 to add that I flew after him expecting at every moment to be pulled 

 down by the enraged lioness. It was a welcome shout, indeed, from 

 one of the men which stopped me " Margaya Saheb, Margaya ! " 



She was a full-grown lioness, but not an old one, judging from 

 the spots on her flanks. My first two shots from the 8-bore had 

 both taken effect too high up and had touched no vital part. The 

 men who had fired the shots I had heard, turned out to be a 

 party of my own sepoys who were looking for me and by the 

 merest chance, had turned up just in the nick of time. They 

 explained that the lioness nearly ran into them almost immediately 

 after they had heard my shots, they had fired in self-defence and 

 one of their shots had hit her in the bod}- and made her come to a 

 standstill. 



In the excitement of the moment I had not noticed what 

 became of the other two lions, but Hebat said he saw them making 

 off in another direction as soon as I had fired. Having had 

 nothing to eat since the early morning, we were about famished by 

 this time, and our water had given out long before, so slinging 

 the lioness on to a pole we made our way back to Khokra where 

 the men's food as well as my own, had been left. On arrival 

 there we found near the spot, where our men were waiting for us, 



