196 
SOMALILAND 
with a coat which looked like that of a klipspringer, rushed 
panic-stricken almost into me. I instinctively raised my 
rifle, my nerves being strung to the utmost. 
At length I could bear the heat no longer : the gigantic 
tongues of flame were almost upon me, the roar of the fire 
had become deafening. Just as I made one wild rush to 
avoid it, I heard shouts to my right of ‘ Libah ! libah !’ (Lion ! 
lion !), Lunning fast round the flames, I discovered that 
the lion had broken covert close to three of my men, but 
he had either been too quick for them, or they were too 
frightened to fire. We literally raced on the spoor. All 
at once my shikari shouted excitedly : ‘ Kill him ! kill him T 
‘ By all means,’ I replied, ‘ but let me see him first for I 
saw only a tiny dik-dik antelope dash through the grass. 
Soon after this excitement we fired the grass again, but 
the lion dodged us a second time, and began to run, and 
eventually we lost the track in utterly imi^ossible jungle. 
I went home dead tired, as I had not tasted food for 
upwards of twenty hours. Determined to try my utmost 
to bag the man-eater, I built zarebas near four different 
villages, tied up baits outside each, and posted men inside 
them. But the lion beat us even then, as he stole a small 
camel in broad daylight, and retired with it into the jungle. 
Whilst pottering about the villages, I met an eye-witness 
of the death of Prince Ruspoli, who was killed by an 
elephant south of the Webbi Shebeyli, after having behaved 
extremely badly to the natives about the river. He said 
that he had joined the Prince’s caravan very reluctantly, well 
knowing that the Prince was utterly mad. One day the 
Prince, seeing a large elephant in the track, laid his rifle on 
the ground, saying, ‘ I have killed three elephants ; see me 
catch this one 1’ A minute afterwards, the narrator told 
me, he was flying up skyward, and on coming down was 
soon trodden into a jelly by the infuriated monster. All 
this time I had been waiting for the Stanfords, to fetch 
whom I had sent my guide. 
