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.
