. Just, he touched the spot.

In his reign at the Cape, the lion was still rampant far south of the
Zambesi. Twice, while hunting, he got on the trail of the monarch, but he
never slew him. A leopard would skulk into the demesne of Table Mountain
itself, and be ingloriously trapped. The lion made other sport, lying on
a high place while it was day, and going forth to roam at dark. Sir
George went to the Bible for the character sketch of the lion, in
particular to the Psalms:

Thou makest darkness, and it is night;
Wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.
The young lions roar after their prey,
And seek their meat from God:
The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together,
And lay them down in their dens.

There was a hill, with a wide outlook of plain, and from it, the lesser
wild animals at feed, might be marked for the gloaming. It was covert
wherein the lion could abide, to lie in wait, a secret lurking-place. Up
the back of this hill climbed Sir George, eye and ear on the alert, for
one suspected to be about. He was about, but already bounding down the
rocky face of the ridge, in a hurry to be clear of the hunter. Sir George
mounted his horse, eager to cut him off, and rode, break-neck, the path
he had already climbed. There the lion galloped, at a kingly swing,
heading for the thick bush in the distance. As he neared it, Sir George
aimed a forlorn shot, which proved a farewell salute. He dismounted, and
waded through the growth, to the concern of his Kaffir boy, but the lion
was tracked no more.

These excursions of a leisure hour sent Sir George fresh, vigorous, full
of resource to the alarums that arraigned him in South Africa. The
greatest of them was not South African, but blew across the Indian Ocean.
On an August morning, a steamer drew wearily into Table Bay with a
message for the Governor. It was an express from Lord Elphinstone at
Bombay, red-bordered, in that it told of the tremendous affair now calmly
fixed in history as the Indian Mutiny. Here was an earnest cry, 'Come
over and help us,' addressed to the potent British satrap nearest in the
Seven Seas.

'Yes,' Sir George mentioned, 'the despatch was in no wise positive as to
the outlook in India. Trouble there had been and would be; that was
certain. But was India merely face to face with a disturbance which she
could manage herself, or was it a widespread mutiny? I was really left to
form my own view upon