eeds, sending spouts
of fire twenty feet and more into the air, and making the hot air dance
above it in a way that was perfectly dazzling. But the reeds were
still half green, and created an enormous quantity of smoke, which came
rolling toward me like a curtain, lying very low on account of the wind.
Presently, above the crackling of the fire, I heard a startled roar,
then another and another. So the lions were at home.

"I was beginning to get excited now, for, as you fellows know, there
is nothing in experience to warm up your nerves like a lion at close
quarters, unless it is a wounded buffalo; and I got still more so when
I made out through the smoke that the lions were all moving about on the
extreme edge of the reeds. Occasionally they would pop their heads out
like rabbits from a burrow, and then, catching sight of me standing
about fifty yards out, draw them back again. I knew that it must be
getting pretty warm behind them, and that they could not keep the game
up for long; and I was not mistaken, for suddenly all four of them broke
cover together, the old black-maned lion leading by a few yards. I never
saw a more splendid sight in all my hunting experience than those four
lions bounding across the veldt, overshadowed by the dense pall of smoke
and backed by the fiery furnace of the burning reeds.

"I reckoned that they would pass, on their road to the bushy kloof,
within about five and twenty yards of me; so, taking a long breath, I
got my gun well on to the lion's shoulder--the black-maned one--so as to
allow for an inch or two of motion, and catch him through the heart.
I was on, dead on, and my finger was just beginning to tighten on the
trigger, when suddenly I went blind--a bit of reed-ash had drifted into
my right eye. I danced and rubbed, and succeeded in clearing it more or
less just in time to see the tail of the last lion vanishing round the
bushes up the kloof.

"If ever a man was mad I was that man. It was too bad; and such a shot
in the open, too! However, I was not going to be beaten, so I just
turned and marched for the kloof. Tom, the driver, begged and implored
me not to go; but though as a general rule I never pretend to be very
brave (which I am not), I was determined that I would either kill those
lions or they should kill me. So I told Tom that he need not come unless
he liked, but I was going; and being a plucky fellow, a Swazi by birth,
he shrugged his shoulders, muttered that I was