166 
THE NEW AFRICA 
for I felt sure there was a nest of lions here, and I could not 
properly take in the whole view at one glance. If I had only 
had a double eight or ten-bore, a weapon that kills on the spot 
at short ranges, things would have been different, but the Swin- 
burne-Henry is not a dead stopper at close quarters; so I 
remained waiting until the boys reached me, and then made 
a cautious circuit of the bushes to look for possible lions still 
in hiding. The hit lioness meanwhile was still roaring, though 
much more faintly. My move came too late, for all the troop had 
gone, leaving only their tracks: the carcase of a second decaying 
Harris buck we found about fifty yards from the edge of the 
thicket on the left. The lioness on the right, now only about 
two hundred yards off, uttered gurgling growls, which soon 
ceased altogether. 
Scolding the boys for not having stuck to me in the first 
instance, and making a row to induce them to go into the bush, 
we tracked the first lioness carefully to the edge of the thicket, 
and could see by the blood that had sprinkled the grass on both 
sides of the track that she had been hard hit. Chiki was not 
with us, so I told another boy to follow the track, and I would 
come after, covering him and looking out ahead, while the rest 
were to come on behind with their spears. It was a risky thing; 
but I wanted the claws, and the boys were willing. Slowly and 
cautiously we proceeded in single file, looking ahead at every 
step. We had gone about fifty yards, when the front boy gave 
a jump as if the old gentleman himself had prodded him with 
his tail, and got behind me. His pains and fright were unneces¬ 
sary, however, for there, about four yards ahead, the lioness lay 
dead. We cut off the claws and made for home. On the way 
home, out of three koodoo we saw feeding on the edge of a bush 
I managed to drop a doe, which supplied us with enough meat 
to go on with. 
Franz and Paul had also been out, and returned with a 
wonderful tale of having been chased for ever so far by a 
rhinoceros; but they had shot nothing. 
Hammar had killed a letzwee buck at eight hundred yards, 
