CHAPTER VI 
A LION DRIVE. WITH A RHINO IN RANGE SOME ONE 
SHOUTS “SIMBA” AND I GET MY FIRST GLIMPSE 
OF A WILD LION. THREE SHOTS AND OUT 
Like every one who goes to Africa with a gun 
and a return ticket, I had two absorbing ambitions. 
One was to kill a lion and the other to live to tell 
about it. In my estimation all the other animals 
compared to a lion as latitude eighty-seven and a 
half compares to the north pole. I wanted to climb 
out of the Tartarin of Tarascon class of near lion 
hunters into the ranks of those who are entitled to 
remark, “Once, when I was in Africa shooting 
lions,” etc. A dead lion is bogey in the big game 
sport—the score that every hunter dreams of achiev¬ 
ing—and I was extremely eager to make the dream 
a reality. 
When speaking with English sportsmen in Lon¬ 
don my first question was, “Did you get any lions?” 
If they had, they at once rose in my estimation; if 
not, no matter how many elephants or rhinos or buf¬ 
faloes they may have shot, they still remained in the 
amateur class. 
On the steamer going down to Mombasa the 
hunting talk was four-fifths lion and one-fifth 
about other game. The cripple who had been badly 
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