82 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch. vii 
the womans body where we had found it, hoping 
that under cover of night the brutes would hie them 
back to finish their meal and give us a chance of 
avenging the poor creature’s death. Making as 
comfortable a perch as possible in the branches of a 
convenient tree, rifle in hand, I kept a weary vigil 
till dawn broke, but, throughout the long tropical 
night, no lion’s shape darkened the expanse of the 
brightly moonlit shamba. 
Strange to relate, the native who had thus lost 
wife and child in one afternoon was, a few days 
after his bereavement, himself seized and devoured 
by a crocodile. 
