B. knelt
outside the thicket, straining his eyes for the slightest
movement either side of the line of our advance. Often these wily
animals will sneak back in a half circle to attack their pursuers
from behind. Two or three of the bolder porters crouched
alongside B., peering eagerly. The rest had quite properly
retired to the safe distance where the horses stood.
We progressed very, very slowly. Every splash of light or mottled
shadow, every clump of bush stems, every fallen log had to be
examined, and then examined again. And how we did strain our eyes
in a vain attempt to penetrate the half lights, the duskinesses
of the closed-in thicket not over fifteen feet away! And then the
movement forward of two feet would bring into our field of vision
an entirely new set of tiny vistas and possible lurking places.
Speaking for myself, I was keyed up to a tremendous tension. I
stared until my eyes ached; every muscle and nerve was taut.
Everything depended on seeing the beast promptly, and firing
quickly. With the manifest advantage of being able to see us, she
would spring to battle fully prepared. A yellow flash and a quick
shot seemed about to size up that situation. Every few moments, I
remember, I surreptitiously held out my hand to see if the
constantly growing excitement and the long-continued strain had
affected its steadiness.
The combination of heat and nervous strain was very exhausting.
The sweat poured from me; and as F. passed me I saw the great
drops standing out on his face. My tongue got dry, my breath came
laboriously. Finally I began to wonder whether physically I
should be able to hold out. We had been crawling, it seemed, for
hours. I dared not look back, but we must have come a good
quarter mile. Finally F. stopped.
"I'm all in for water," he gasped in a whisper.
Somehow that confession made me feel a lot better. I had thought
that I was the only one. Cautiously we settled back on our heels.
Memba Sasa and Simba wiped the sweat from their faces. It seemed
that they too had found the work severe. That cheered me up still
more.
Simba grinned at us, and, worming his way backward with the
sinuousity of a snake, he disappeared in the direction from which
we had come. F. cursed after him in a whisper both for departing
and for taking the risk. But in a moment he had returned carrying
two canteens of blessed water. We took a drink most gratefully.
I glanced at my watch. It was just under two hours since I had
fired my shot. I looked back. My supposed quarter mile had shrunk
to not over fifty feet!
After resting a few moments longer, we again took up our
systematic advance. We made perhaps another fifty feet. We were
ascending a very gentle slope. F. was for the moment ahead. Right
before us the lion growled; a deep rumbling like the end of a
great thunder roll, fathoms and fathoms deep, with the inner
subterranean vibrations of a heavy train of cars passing a man
inside a sealed building. At the same moment over F.'s shoulder I
saw a huge yellow head rise up, the round eyes flashing anger,
the small black-tipped ears laid back, the great fangs snarling.
The beast was not over twelve feet distant. F. immediately fired.
His shot, hitting an intervening twig, went wild. With the utmost
coolness he immediately pulled the other trigger of his double
barrel. The cartridge snapped.
"If you will kindly stoop down-" said I, in what I now remember
to be rather an exaggeratedly polite tone. As F.'s head
disappeared, I placed the little gold bead of my 405 Winchester
where I thought it would do the most good, and pulled trigger.
She rolled over dead.
The whole affair had begun and finished with unbelievable
swiftness. From the growl to the fatal shot I don't suppose four
seconds elapsed, for our various actions had followed one another
with the speed of the instinctive. The lioness had growled at our
approach, had raised her head to charge, and had received her
deathblow before she had released her muscles in the spring.
There had been no time to get frightened.
We sat back for a second. A brown hand reached over my shoulder.
"Mizouri-mizouri sana!" cried Memba Sasa joyously. I shook the
hand.
"Good business!" said F. "Congratulate you on your first lion."
We then remembered B., and shouted to him that all was over. He
and the other men wriggled in to where we were lying. He made
this distance in about fifteen seconds. It had taken us nearly an
hour.
We had the lioness dragged out into the open. She was not an
especially large beast, as compared to most of the others I
killed later, but at that time she looked to me about as big as
they made them. As a matter of fact she was quite big enough, for
she stood three feet two inches at the shoulder-measure that
against the wall-and was seven feet and six inches in length. My
first bullet had hit her leg, and the last had reached her heart.
Every one shook me by the hand. The gunbearers squatted about
the carcass, skilfully removing the skin to an undertone of
curious crooning that every few moments broke out into one or two
bars of a chant. As the body was uncovered, the men crouched
about to cut off little pieces of fat. These they rubbed on their
foreheads and over their chests, to make them brave, they said,
and cunning, like the lion.
We remounted and took up our interrupted journey to camp.
