the round eyes
flashing anger, the small black-tipped ears laid back, the great fangs
snarling. The beast was not over twelve feet distant. F. immediately
fired. His shot, hitting an intervening twig, went wild. With the utmost
coolness he immediately pulled the other trigger of his double barrel.
The cartridge snapped.

"If you will kindly stoop down-" said I, in what I now remember to be
rather an exaggeratedly polite tone. As F.'s head disappeared, I placed
the little gold bead of my 405 Winchester where I thought it would do
the most good, and pulled trigger. She rolled over dead.

The whole affair had begun and finished with unbelievable swiftness.
From the growl to the fatal shot I don't suppose four seconds elapsed,
for our various actions had followed one another with the speed of the
instinctive. The lioness had growled at our approach, had raised her
head to charge, and had received her deathblow before she had released
her muscles in the spring. There had been no time to get frightened.

We sat back for a second. A brown hand reached over my shoulder.

"Mizouri-mizouri sana!" cried Memba Sasa joyously. I shook the hand.

"Good business!" said F. "Congratulate you on your first lion."

We then remembered B., and shouted to him that all was over. He and the
other men wriggled in to where we were lying. He made this distance in
about fifteen seconds. It had taken us nearly an hour.

We had the lioness dragged out into the open. She was not an especially
large beast, as compared to most of the others I killed later, but at
that time she looked to me about as big as they made them. As a matter
of fact she was quite big enough, for she stood three feet two inches
at the shoulder-measure that against the wall-and was seven feet and
six inches in length. My first bullet had hit her leg, and the last had
reached her heart.

Every one shook me by the hand. The gunbearers squatted about the
carcass, skilfully removing the skin to an undertone of curious crooning
that every few moments broke out into one or two bars of a chant. As the
body was uncovered, the men crouched about to cut off little pieces of
fat. These they rubbed on their foreheads and over their chests, to make
them brave, they said, and cunning, like the lion.

We remounted and took up our interrupted journey to camp. It was
a little after two, and the heat was at its worst. We rode rather
sleepily, for the reaction from the high tension of excit