standing about fifty yards away, 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 way 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! 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 personal 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 mad or bewitched, and
followed doggedly in my tracks.

"We soon reached the kloof, which was about three hundred yards in
length and but sparsely wooded, and then the real fun began. There might
be a lion behind every bush--there certainly were four lions somewhere;
the delicate question was, where. I peeped and poked and looked in every
possible direction, with my heart in my mouth, and was at last rewarded
by catching a glimpse of something yellow moving behind a bush. At the
same moment, from another bush opposite me out burst one of the cubs
and galloped back towards the burnt pan. I whipped round and let drive a
snap shot that tipped him head over heels, breaking his back within two
inches of the root of the tail, and there he lay helpless but glaring.
Tom afterwards killed him with his assegai. I opened the breech of the