ous
bound, vanished into the night.

"Then we advanced cautiously towards the prostrate brute, Mashune
droning an improvised Zulu song as he went, about how Macumazahn, the
hunter of hunters, whose eyes are open by night as well as by day, put
his hand down the lion's stomach when it came to devour him and
pulled out his heart by the roots, &c., &c., by way of expressing his
satisfaction, in his hyperbolical Zulu way, at the turn events had
taken.

"There was no need for caution; the lion was as dead as though he had
already been stuffed with straw. The Martini bullet had entered within
an inch of the white spot I had aimed at, and travelled right through
him, passing out at the right buttock, near the root of the tail. The
Martini has wonderful driving power, though the shock it gives to the
system is, comparatively speaking, slight, owing to the smallness of the
hole it makes. But fortunately the lion is an easy beast to kill.

"I passed the rest of that night in a profound slumber, my head reposing
upon the deceased lion's flank, a position that had, I thought, a
beautiful touch of irony about it, though the smell of his singed hair
was disagreeable. When I woke again the faint primrose lights of dawn
were flushing in the eastern sky. For a moment I could not understand
the chill sense of anxiety that lay like a lump of ice at my heart, till
the feel and smell of the skin of the dead lion beneath my head recalled
the circumstances in which we were placed. I rose, and eagerly looked
round to see if I could discover any signs of Hans, who, if he had
escaped accident, would surely return to us at dawn, but there were
none. Then hope grew faint, and I felt that it was not well with the
poor fellow. Setting Mashune to build up the fire I hastily removed the
hide from the flank of the lion, which was indeed a splendid beast,
and cutting off some lumps of flesh, we toasted and ate them greedily.
Lions' flesh, strange as it may seem, is very good eating, and tastes
more like veal than anything else.

"By the time we had finished our much-needed meal the sun was getting
up, and after a drink of water and a wash at the pool, we started to
try and find Hans, leaving the dead lion to the tender mercies of the
hyaenas. Both Mashune and myself were, by constant practice, pretty
good hands at tracking, and we had not much difficulty in following
the Hottentot's spoor, faint as it was. We had gone on in this way for
half-an-hou