ver some little distance above the bridge. This I knew was the
debris of the trolley crossing furthest up the river. On it came, and
with it an additional bank of stormy-looking water. I held my breath
for the space of a moment as it actually leaped at the second frail
structure; there was a dull thud and a rending and riving of timbers,
and then the flood rolled on towards me, leaving not a vestige of the
two bridges behind it. The impact, indeed, was so great that the rails
were twisted round the broken tree-trunks as if they had been so much
ordinary wire. The double tier of wreckage now swept forward, and
hurled itself with a sullen plunge against the cutwaters of my stone
piers. The shock was great, but to my immense satisfaction the bridge
took it without a tremor, and I saw the remnant of the temporary
crossings swirl through the great spans and quickly disappear on its
journey to the ocean. I confess that I witnessed the whole occurrence
with a thrill of pride.

We were never long without excitement of some kind or another at Tsavo.
When the camp was not being attacked by man-eating lions, it was
visited by leopards, hyenas, wild dogs, wild cats, and other
inhabitants of the jungle around us. These animals did a great deal of
damage to the herds of sheep and goats which were kept to supply the
commissariat, and there was always great rejoicing when a capture was
made in one of the many traps that were laid for them.

Leopards especially are most destructive, often killing simply for
pleasure and not for food: and I have always harboured animosity
towards them since the night when one wantonly destroyed a whole herd
of mine. I happened at the time to have a flock of about thirty sheep
and goats which I kept for food and for milk, and which were secured at
sundown in a grass hut at one corner of my boma. One particularly dark
night we were startled by a tremendous commotion in this shed, but as
this was before the man-eaters were killed, no one dared stir out to
investigate the cause of the disturbance. I naturally thought that the
intruder was one of the "demons," but all I could do was to fire
several shots in the direction of the hut, hoping to frighten him away.
In spite of these, however, it was some time before the noise died down
and everything became still again. As soon as it was dawn I went to the
shed to see what had happened, and there, to my intense anger, I found
every one of my sheep and goats lyin