attitude. Nevertheless B. and F. were
working hard. We caught glimpses of them occasionally slipping from bush
to bush. Finally B. knelt and levelled his rifle. At once I turned my
glasses on the buck. Before the sound of the rifle had reached me, I saw
him start convulsively, then make off at the tearing run that indicates
a heart hit. A moment later the crack of the rifle and the dull plunk of
the hitting bullet struck my ear.

We tracked him fifty yards to where he lay dead. He was a fine trophy,
and we at once set the boys to preparing it and taking the meat. In the
meantime we sauntered down to look at the stream. It was a small
rapid affair, but in heavy papyrus, with sparse trees, and occasional
thickets, and dry hard banks. The papyrus should make a good lurking
place for almost anything; but the few points of access to the water
failed to show many interesting tracks. Nevertheless we decided to
explore a short distance.

For an hour we walked among high thornbushes, over baking hot earth. We
saw two or three dik-dik and one of the giraffes. At that time it had
become very hot, and the sun was bearing down on us as with the weight
of a heavy hand. The air had the scorching, blasting quality of an
opened furnace door. Our mouths were getting dry and sticky in that
peculiar stage of thirst on which no luke-warm canteen water in
necessarily limited quantity has any effect. So we turned back, picked
up the men with the waterbuck, and plodded on down the little stream,
or, rather, on the red-hot dry valley bottom outside the stream's
course, to where the syces were waiting with our horses. We mounted with
great thankfulness. It was now eleven o'clock, and we considered our day
as finished.

The best way for a distance seemed to follow the course of the tributary
stream to its point of junction with our river. We rode along, rather
relaxed in the suffocating heat. F. was nearest the stream. At one point
it freed itself of trees and brush and ran clear, save for low papyrus,
ten feet down below a steep eroded bank. F. looked over and uttered a
startled exclamation. I spurred my horse forward to see.

Below us, about fifteen yards away, was the carcass of a waterbuck half
hidden in the foot-high grass. A lion and two lionesses stood upon it,
staring up at us with great yellow eyes. That picture is a very vivid
one in my memory, for those were the first wild lions I had ever seen.
My most lively impression was of the