an elephant gun. Ignorant of whether or
not the lion was even wounded, in the brave boy came, crept in range
and fired a great eight-bore ball fair through the lion's heart.

"It was only a few hours until, working with knife and tweezers, the
_Sahib_ had all the mimosa thorns dug out of my back and legs, but it
was many months before Djama Aout recovered partial use of his good
right arm, and it may very well be generations before the story of his
heroic deed ceases to be sung in Somali villages."

CHAPTER XVI

A MODERN COEUR-DE-LION

To seek to come to death grips with the King of Beasts, a man must
himself be nothing short of lion-hearted. Such men there are, a few,
men with an inborn lust of battle, a love of staking their own lives
against the heaviest odds; men who, lacking a Crusader's cult or a
country's need to cut and thrust for, go out among the savage denizens
of the desert seeking opportunity to fight for their faith in their own
strong arms and steady nerves; men who shrink from a laurel but
treasure a trophy. William Northrup McMillan, a native of St. Louis,
who has spent the last eight years in exploration of the Blue Nile and
in travel through Abyssinia and British East Africa, is such a man.

A friend of Mr. McMillan has told me the following story of one of his
hunting experiences. While I can only tell it in simple prose, the
deed described deserves perpetuity in the stately metre of a saga.

The Jig-Jigga country, a province of Abyssinia lying near the border of
British Somaliland and governed by Abdullah Dowa, an Arab sheik owing
allegiance to King Menelek, is the best lion country in all Africa.
Jig-Jigga is an arid plateau averaging 5,000 feet above sea level,
poorly watered but generously grassed, sparsely timbered with the
thorny mimosa (full brother to the Texas _mesquite_), and swarming
everywhere with innumerable varieties of the wild game on which the
lion preys and fattens--eland, oryx, hartebeest, gazelle, and zebra.

There are two ways of hunting lion. First, from the perfectly safe
shelter of a zareba, a tightly enclosed hut built of thorny mimosa
bows, with no opening but a narrow porthole for rifle fire. Within the
_zareba_ the hunter is shut in at nightfall by his _shikaris_, usually
having one _shikari_ with him, sometimes with a goat as a third
companion and a lure for lion. An occasional bite of the goat's ear by
sharp _shikari_ teeth inspires shrill bleats sur