48 
SPOET AND WAR. 
CHAP. VIII. 
On the evening of our second day we got to a Dutch 
farmer’s hut, and found the men at target-practice. 
This being such an unusual thing in those days, when 
lead and powder were both scarce, we enquired the 
reason, when old Dederick Putter told us that the 
lions had the night before killed the two c wheelers ’ 
of his team of horses, and that the boys were putting 
their guns 6 op schot,’ or sighting them, to go after 
the lions the next day. He invited us to join them. 
This we were delighted to do, and halted for the night 
accordingly. Our guns were also tried, and none of us 
were satisfied until we could hit the small knuckle-bone 
of an ox—the knee-cap or joint from between the two 
long bones—-at eighty yards’ distance. 
There were five Dutchmen and ourselves, seven in 
all. We started at daybreak the next morning, and 
made for the spot where the two horses had been killed. 
It was one of those mornings in South Africa when a 
thick fog precedes a very hot day. We reached the 
dead horses—or rather what was left of them, for there 
was nothing remaining but the backbones and heads— 
just as the sun had risen. The mist was so thick that 
the rays of the sun made a complete halo round you 
for about twenty yards distant, and beyond that dis¬ 
tance you could see nothing. This made it the more 
critical, as the lions had only left the carcasses just as we 
got to the spot. We could tell this by the sparkling dew 
