o devour. I could plainly hear them crunching the bones, and
the sound of their dreadful purring filled the air and rang in my ears
for days afterwards. The terrible thing was to feel so helpless; it was
useless to attempt to go out, as of course the poor fellow was dead,
and in addition it was so pitch dark as to make it impossible to see
anything. Some half a dozen workmen, who lived in a small enclosure
close to mine, became so terrified on hearing the lions at their meal
that they shouted and implored me to allow them to come inside my boma.
This I willingly did, but soon afterwards I remembered that one man had
been lying ill in their camp, and on making enquiry I found that they
had callously left him behind alone. I immediately took some men with
me to bring him to my boma, but on entering his tent I saw by the light
of the lantern that the poor fellow was beyond need of safety. He had
died of shock at being deserted by his companions.

From this time matters gradually became worse and worse. Hitherto, as a
rule, only one of the man-eaters had made the attack and had done the
foraging, while the other waited outside in the bush; but now they
began to change their tactics, entering the bomas together and each
seizing a victim. In this way two Swahili porters were killed during
the last week of November, one being immediately carried off and
devoured. The other was heard moaning for a long time, and when his
terrified companions at last summoned up sufficient courage to go to
his assistance, they found him stuck fast in the bushes of the boma,
through which for once the lion had apparently been unable to drag him.
He was still alive when I saw him next morning, but so terribly mauled
that he died before he could be got to the hospital.

Within a few days of this the two brutes made a most ferocious attack
on the largest camp in the section, which for safety's sake was
situated within a stone's throw of Tsavo Station and close to a
Permanent Way Inspector's iron hut. Suddenly in the dead of night the
two man-eaters burst in among the terrified workmen, and even from my
boma, some distance away, I could plainly hear the panic-stricken
shrieking of the coolies. Then followed cries of "They've taken him;
they've taken him," as the brutes carried off their unfortunate victim
and began their horrible feast close beside the camp. The Inspector,
Mr. Dalgairns, fired over fifty shots in the direction in which he
heard the