90 
IN AFRICA 
noticed a rhino standing under the trees, but he was 
not the wounded one. I decided that the shade was 
insufficient for both of us and moved swiftly on. 
Across the valley on the slope of another blistered 
hill stood the one I was looking for. He didn’t 
seem to be in the chastened mood of one who is 
about to die. He seemed vexed about something, 
probably the two cordite shells he was carrying. I 
at last came up within a hundred yards of him. He 
had got my wind and was facing me with tail nerv¬ 
ously erect. The tail of a rhino is an infallible bar¬ 
ometer of his state of mind. With his short sight, I 
knew that he could not see me at that distance, hut I 
knew that he had detected the direction in which the 
danger lay. By slowly moving ahead, the distance 
was cut to about seventy yards, which was not too 
far away in an open country with a wounded rhino 
in the foreground. I resolved to shoot before he 
charged or before he ran away, and so I prepared to 
end the long chase with an unerring shot. 
Suddenly a sound struck my ear that acted upon 
me like an electric shock: 
“Simba!” 
It was the one word that I had been hoping to 
hear ever since leaving Nairobi, for the word 
means “lion.” My Somali gunbearer was eagerly 
pointing toward a lone tree that stood a hun¬ 
dred yards off to the left. A huge, hulking 
animal was slowly moving away from it. It was 
my first glimpse of a wild lion. He was half con¬ 
cealed in the tall, dry grass and in a few seconds 
