222 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA chap. 
when his body was brought in on the camel and laid before 
them on the grass. 
I determined to devote the next twenty-four hours to hunting 
up the lioness, and having organised a party of trackers, left 
the remainder of the men to bury my follower, while we started 
off on foot for the khansa thicket where we had found the body. 
We described a circle at fifty yards’ distance from the thicket, 
the ground being very stony and covered with bushes, when we 
at last came upon the track of the lioness ; and following this 
for three miles over difficult ground, covered with dense thickets, 
at sunset we gave it up. 
Returning to camp I chanced to look round, w r hen my eye 
fell upon the lioness, her head being raised above a tuft of grass 
in a passage between two khansa bushes. Turning round I took 
a quiet pot shot at her ; a lioness’s head half hidden in grass, at 
ninety yards’ distance and in the dusk, is not a good target, and 
before I could see under the smoke I knew that I had missed, 
for there was no answering thud of the bullet. Running up to 
the spot on which she had been crouching, we examined the 
track where she had bounded away, and holding the trail for a 
quarter of a mile through the thick covert, and with the greatest 
difficulty, the men kneeling over displaced gravel, broken twigs, 
and other scanty evidences of her passage, and finding no sign 
of blood, we gave her up and sadly made for camp, which was 
reached an hour or two after dark. 
On the next day we again took up the signs where we had 
left them, slight rain having fallen in the night ; but search as 
we would, we could never find any indication of her having 
stayed in the neighbourhood. All the tracks were those of the 
night before, and making a final circular cast of a mile round 
through the bush over gravelly ground, we gave up the search, 
and I resolved to march on towards the coast, having no more 
leave to spare. 
Passing Daura’s grave we surprised two liysenas trying to 
grub up the stones that had been heaped over the poor fellow, 
and dropping one dead, we sent the other moaning away with 
a bullet in his ribs. The Malingur, wdio turned out to be those 
who had been at Durhi a month ago, begged me to remain and 
have another try for the lion and lioness (for there were a pair 
of man-eaters here), so I had a zerfba built, and tied up a 
donkey, and sat up all night six feet away from it, but without 
result. The Malingur said that since the lion had killed the 
