hare, as he
deserved. In the meantime the lion, hearing the noise of the squabble,
halted on the crest of the hill to take a deliberate look at me, and
then disappeared over the brow. I jumped on to my mule and galloped as
hard as I could after him, and luckily found the pair still in sight
when I reached the top of the rise. As soon as they saw me following
them up, the lioness took covert in some long grass that almost
concealed her when she lay down, but the lion continued to move
steadily away. Accordingly I made for a point which would bring me
about two hundred yards to the right of the lioness, and which would
leave a deep natural hollow between us, so as to give me a better
chance, in the event of a charge, of bowling her over as she came up
the rise towards me. I could plainly make out her light-coloured form
in the grass, and took careful aim and fired. In an instant she was
kicking on her back and tossing about, evidently hard hit; in a few
seconds more she lay perfectly still, and I saw that she was dead.

I now turned my attention to the lion, who meanwhile had disappeared
over another rise. By this time Mahina and the other Indian, with three
or four of the disappointed Wa Kamba, had come up, so we started off in
a body in pursuit of him. I felt sure that he was lurking somewhere in
the grass not far off, and I knew that I could depend upon the native
eye to find him if he showed so much as the tip of his ear. Nor was I
disappointed, for we had scarcely topped the next rise when one of the
Wa Kamba spotted the dark brown head of the brute as he raised it for
an instant above the grass in order to watch us. We pretended not to
have seen him, however, and advanced to within two hundred yards or so,
when, as he seemed to be getting uneasy, I thought it best to risk a
shot even at this range. I put up the 200-yards sight and the bullet
fell short; but the lion never moved. Raising the sight another fifty
yards, I rested the rifle on Mahina's back for the next shot, and again
missed; fortunately, however, the lion still remained quiet. I then
decided to put into practice the scheme I had thought out the day I sat
astride the lion I had killed on the Kapiti Plain: so I told all my
followers to move off to the right, taking the mule with them, and to
make a half-circle round the animal, while I lay motionless in the
grass and waited. The ruse succeeded admirably, for as the men moved
round so did the lion, offeri