culations on good nature. One or the other of the
gunbearers was always just behind me. Only once was any comment made.
Kongoni looked very closely into my face.

"There are very many lions," he remarked doubtfully.

"Very many lions," I agreed, as though assenting to a mere statement of
fact.

Although I am convinced there was no real danger, as long as we stuck to
our plan of campaign, nevertheless it was quite interesting to be for so
long a period so near these great brutes. They led us for a mile or so
along the course of the stream, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the
other. Several times they emerged into better cover, and even into the
open, but always ducked back into the thick again before we ourselves
had followed their trail to the clear.

At noon we were halted by the usual growl just as we had reached the
edge of the river. So we sat down on the banks and had lunch.

Finally our chance came. The trail led us, for the dozenth time, from
the high grass into the thicket along the river. We ducked our heads
to enter. Memba Sasa, next my shoulder, snapped his fingers violently.
Following the direction of the brown arm that shot over my shoulder, I
strained my eyes into the dimness of the thicket. At first I could see
nothing at all, but at length a slight motion drew my eye. Then I made
out the silhouette of a lion's head, facing us steadily. One of the
rear guard had again turned to halt us, but this time where he and his
surroundings could be seen.

Luckily I always use a Sheard gold bead sight, and even in the dimness
of the tree-shaded thicket it showed up well. The beast was only forty
yards away, so I fired at his head. He rolled over without a sound.

We took the usual great precautions in determining the genuineness of
his demise, then carried him into the open. Strangely enough the bullet
had gone so cleanly into his left eye that it had not even broken the
edge of the eyelid; so that when skinned he did not show a mark. He was
a very decent maned lion, three feet four inches at the shoulder, and
nine feet long as he lay. We found that he had indeed been the rear
guard, and that the rest, on the other side of the thicket, had made off
at the shot. So in spite of the APPARENT danger of the situation, our
calculations had worked out perfectly. Also we had enjoyed a half day's
sport of an intensity quite impossible to be extracted from any other
method of following the lion.

In trying to gue