FIRST GLIMPSE OF A WILD LION 
95 
sprang up and the second shot stretched him out. 
He was still alive when I came up to him, and a 
small bullet was fired into the base of his brain to 
reduce the danger of a final charge. 
Old hunters always caution one about approach¬ 
ing a dying lion, for often the beast musters up 
unexpected vitalily, makes a final charge, kills some¬ 
body, and then dies happy. So we waited a few 
feet away until the last quiver of his sides had 
passed. One of the boys pulled his tail and shook 
him, but there was no sign of life. He was extinct. 
A new danger now threatened. The grass fire 
that the second gunbearer had started was sweep¬ 
ing the prairie, fanned by a strong wind, and 
there seemed to be not only the danger of abandon¬ 
ing the lion, but of being forced to flee before the 
flames. So we fell to work beating out the nearest 
fires, and trusted that a shifting of the wind would 
send the course of the flames in another direction. 
It was now four o’clock. We were nine miles 
from camp and food, and we knew that at six 
o’clock darkness would suddenly descend, leaving 
us out in a rhino-infested country, far from camp. 
The water was nearly gone and the general outlook 
was far from pleasing. 
The gunbearers skinned the lion. My first shot 
had struck one of his back teeth, breaking it 
squarely off, and then passed through the fleshy 
part of the neck. It was a wound that would 
startle, but not kill. The second shot had hit him 
between the eyes, but had glanced off the skull, 
