stood absolutely motionless. They fed slowly nearer and nearer until
at last they were not over twenty yards away. When finally they made
me out, their indignation and amazement and utter incredulity were very
funny. In fact, they did not believe in me at all for some few snorty
moments. Finally they departed, their absurd tails stiff upright.

One afternoon F. and I, hunting along one of the wide grass bottom
lands, caught sight of a herd of an especially fine impalla. The animals
were feeding about fifty yards the other side of a small solitary bush,
and the bush grew on the sloping bank of the slight depression
that represented the dry stream bottom. We could duck down into the
depression, sneak along it, come up back of the little bush, and shoot
from very close range. Leaving the gunbearers, we proceeded to do this.

So quietly did we move that when we rose up back of the little bush a
lioness lying under it with her cub was as surprised as we were!

Indeed, I do not think she knew what we were, for instead of attacking,
she leaped out the other side the bush, uttering a startled snarl. At
once she whirled to come at us, but the brief respite had allowed us
to recover our own scattered wits. As she turned I caught her broadside
through the heart. Although this shot knocked her down, F. immediately
followed it with another for safety's sake. We found that actually we
had just missed stepping on her tail!

The cub we caught a glimpse of. He was about the size of a setter dog.
We tried hard to find him, but failed. The lioness was an unusually
large one, probably about as big as the female ever grows, measuring
nine feet six inches in length, and three feet eight inches tail at the
shoulder.

Billy had her funny times housekeeping. The kitchen department never
quite ceased marvelling at her. Whenever she went to the cook-camp to
deliver her orders she was surrounded by an attentive and respectful
audience. One day, after holding forth for some time in Swahili, she
found that she had been standing hobnailed on one of the boy's feet.

"Why, Mahomet!" she cried. "That must hurt you! Why didn't you tell me?"

"Memsahib," he smiled politely, "I think perhaps you move some time!"

On another occasion she was trying to tell the cook, through Mahomet
as interpreter, that she wanted a tough old buffalo steak pounded,
boarding-house style. This evidently puzzled all hands. They turned
to in an earnest discussion of wh