at all. Yet they continually did so, and without
a sound being heard.

After this occurrence, I sat up every night for over a week near likely
camps, but all in vain. Either the lions saw me and then went
elsewhere, or else I was unlucky, for they took man after man from
different places without ever once giving me a chance of a shot at
them. This constant night watching was most dreary and fatiguing work,
but I felt that it was a duty that had to be undertaken, as the men
naturally looked to me for protection. In the whole of my life I have
never experienced anything more nerve-shaking than to hear the deep
roars of these dreadful monsters growing gradually nearer and nearer,
and to know that some one or other of us was doomed to be their victim
before morning dawned. Once they reached the vicinity of the camps, the
roars completely ceased, and we knew that they were stalking for their
prey. Shouts would then pass from camp to camp, "Khabar dar, bhaieon,
shaitan ata" ("Beware, brothers, the devil is coming"), but the warning
cries would prove of no avail, and sooner or later agonising shrieks
would break the silence, and another man would be missing from
roll-call next morning.

I was naturally very disheartened at being foiled in this way night
after night, and was soon at my wits' end to know what to do; it seemed
as if the lions were really "devils" after all and bore a charmed life.
As I have said before, tracking them through the jungle was a hopeless
task; but as something had to be done to keep up the men's spirits, I
spent many a weary day crawling on my hands and knees through the dense
undergrowth of the exasperating wilderness around us. As a matter of
fact, if I had come up with the lions on any of these expeditions, it
was much more likely that they would have added me to their list of
victims than that I should have succeeded in killing either of them, as
everything would have been in their favour. About this time, too, I had
many helpers, and several officers--civil, naval and military--came to
Tsavo from the coast and sat up night after night in order to get a
shot at our daring foes. All of us, however, met with the same lack of
success, and the lions always seemed capable of avoiding the watchers,
while succeeding, at the same time in obtaining a victim.

I have a very vivid recollection of one particular night when the
brutes seized a man from the railway station and brought him close to
my camp t