XVII 
CAMPING AT EL BOGOI 
397 
that there would be a better chance of the bait proving an 
attraction. 
There happened to be some Ndorobos from a distance at 
my camp, in addition to Lesiat and a number of his people ; 
and these strangers asked permission to eat the donkey, having- 
no prejudices against the meat such as Lesiat’s tribe professed 
to entertain ; so I allowed them to cut up and remove it, and 
I then set my gun just beyond where it had been, supposing 
that to be the direction from which the lions would be likely to 
come should they return. Not that I felt sure they would 
come again at all, seeing that they had been disturbed before 
getting even a mouthful of their victim and had not attempted 
to return during the night on which it had been killed, although 
that had occurred so early in the evening. As the event proved, 
they did come again ; but not past my gun at all. There were 
a considerable number of Ndorobos in my camp that night, and 
Juma and his men had returned, so we were quite a large party. 
Having done all that could be done, and not expecting 
anything to happen, at all events for some time, as soon as it 
got quite dark I sat down to have my evening porridge (I could 
no longer dignify the meal with the name of dinner now that 
meat was an unknown quantity on my board, owing to my 
being unable to hunt). The camp was quite astir with men 
and natives sitting talking as usual about their fires. Hardly 
had I got seated, and before I could take a second spoonful, 
the donkeys suddenly burst out of the new “ boma ”; and im¬ 
mediately after, amid shouts from the numerous occupants of 
the camp, there was the sound of one of the poor brutes being 
choked by our enemy, not fifty yards from my hut. I was 
standing just outside, rifle in hand, and all crowded round me. 
Aided by their judgment (their ears were better than mine, 
though not their eyes), I calculated the exact direction whence 
these ghastly sounds were issuing ; to see anything was out of 
the question, for not only was it very dark, but the scuffle was 
going on among some brushwood. 
