Then the lioness appeared and I wounded her with my first shot. She ran
out in the open toward us, but evidently without knowing from where the
firing came. A second shot was better placed and I saw her collapse in
her tracks. Leaving the lioness, I went down to where Stephenson had
followed the lion. Several shots had been fired, but the lion was still
running, although badly wounded. Just as it reached a small tree down on
the slope a shot was put into a vital spot, and the lion went wildly
over on his side. Even then he managed to drag himself under the small
bushes surrounding the tree, where a moment later Mr. Stephenson killed
him with a shot from his .318 Mauser.

[Drawing: _"A Very Interesting Experience," Said I Coolly, a Couple
of Days Later_]

We measured and photographed the lion, and then I took my camera to get
a picture of the dead lioness up on the ridge. She was sitting up
snarling, and I was the most surprised person in the world. I shot at
her and she ran fifty yards to a small tree, where she came to a stop.
Two more shots from my big gun finished her, and the photograph was
finally secured.

Leaving the porters to watch the two lions, we followed the third lion
that had been seen in the valley. He had not gone far and we soon found
him, but too far away to get a shot. For an hour we followed him, but he
finally disappeared and could not be located again.

It was sundown when our porters reached camp with the two lions, and it
was then that we ate our long-deferred luncheon.

A week later, while marching from the Tana River to the Zeka River, Mr.
and Mrs. Akeley and I came across a large lion, accompanied by a
lioness. They were first seen moving away across a low sloping ridge of
the plains within a couple of miles of where we had killed the lion and
lioness a week before. We followed them and came up with them after a
brisk walk of ten minutes. Both were hiding in the grass near the crest
of the slope, and we could see their ears and eyes above the long grass.
We crouched down a hundred yards away and the lion rose to see where we
had gone. Mrs. Akeley fired and missed, but her second shot pierced his
brain and he fell like a log. We expected a charge from the lioness and
waited until she should declare herself. But she did not appear and her
whereabouts remained an anxious mystery until she was finally seen
several hundred yards away making her way slowly up a distant hill.
Half-way up sh