166 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
queer bark or neigh. It continued its course past the rhino, 
and started a new train of ideas in the latter’s muddled rep¬ 
tilian brain; round it wheeled, gazed after the zebra, and 
then evidently concluded that everything was normal, for 
it lay down to sleep. 
On we went, past a wildebeest herd lying down; at 
a distance they looked exactly like bison as they used to 
lie out on the prairie in the old days. We halted for an 
hour and a half to rest the men and horses, and took our 
lunch under a thick-trunked olive-tree that must have been 
a couple of centuries old. Again we went on, ever scanning 
through the glasses every distant object which we thought 
might possibly be a lion, and ever being disappointed. A 
serval-cat jumped up ahead of us in the tall grass, but I 
missed it. Then, trotting on foot, I got ahead of two wart- 
hog boars, and killed the biggest; making a bad initial 
miss and then emptying my magazine at it as it ran. 
We sent it in to camp, and went on, following a donga, 
or small watercourse, fringed with big acacias. The 
afternoon was wearing away, and it was time for lions to 
be abroad. 
The sun was near the horizon when Tarlton thought he 
saw something tawny in the watercourse ahead of us, be¬ 
hind a grassy ant-hill, toward which we walked after dis¬ 
mounting. Some buck were grazing peacefully beyond it, 
and for a moment we supposed that this was what he had 
seen. But as we stood, one of the porters behind called 
out ‘^Simba”; and we caught a glimpse of a big lioness 
galloping down beside the trees, just beyond the donga; 
she was out of sight in an instant. Mounting our horses, 
we crossed the donga; she was not to be seen, and we 
