to go out and call the roll, as they had threatened to kill
him also. At this further outrage I lost no time in telegraphing for
the Railway Police, and also to the District Officer, Mr. Whitehead,
who immediately marched his men twenty-five miles by road to my
assistance. I have no doubt, indeed, that his prompt action alone saved
me from being attacked that very night. Two or three days afterwards
the Railway Police arrived and arrested the ringleaders in the mutiny,
who were taken to Mombasa and tried before Mr. Crawford, the British
Consul, when the full details of the plots to murder me were unfolded
by one of them who turned Queen's evidence. All the scoundrels were
found guilty and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment in the
chain-gangs, and I was never again troubled with mutinous workmen.

CHAPTER VI

THE REIGN OF TERROR

The lions seemed to have got a bad fright the night Brock and I sat up
in wait for them in the goods-wagon, for they kept away from Tsavo and
did not molest us in any way for some considerable time--not, in fact,
until long after Brock had left me and gone on safari (a caravan
journey) to Uganda. In this breathing space which they vouchsafed us,
it occurred to me that should they renew their attacks, a trap would
perhaps offer the best chance of getting at them, and that if I could
construct one in which a couple of coolies might be used as bait
without being subjected to any danger, the lions would be quite daring
enough to enter it in search of them and thus be caught. I accordingly
set to work at once, and in a short time managed to make a sufficiently
strong trap out of wooden sleepers, tram-rails, pieces of telegraph
wire, and a length of heavy chain. It was divided into two
compartments--one for the men and one for the lion. A sliding door at
one end admitted the former, and once inside this compartment they were
perfectly safe, as between them and the lion, if he entered the other,
ran a cross wall of iron rails only three inches apart, and embedded
both top and bottom in heavy wooden sleepers. The door which was to
admit the lion was, of course, at the opposite end of the structure,
but otherwise the whole thing was very much on the principle of the
ordinary rat-trap, except that it was not necessary for the lion to
seize the bait in order to send the door clattering down. This part of
the contrivance was arranged in the following manner. A heavy chain was
secured alo