e last we'll see of them," said I oracularly as I sat upon a
stone. My hand was covered with blood, but alas! it was mine and not the
lion's.

The carriage appeared and we held a prolonged consolation meeting.
Suddenly our general utility boy, Happy Bill, uttered a low cry of
warning. We turned, and there, in the valley ahead of us, the three
lions were again seen. They had evidently passed through the reeds
without stopping and had continued across only a few yards from where we
were now standing.

Fate seemed determined to give us plenty of chances to get these lions.
Again we opened fire on them at about four or five hundred yards. My
big-gun ammunition was gone, so I fired with my .256.

No result! The distance was too great and our bombardment was fruitless.
The black-maned lion was in a bad humor and repeatedly turned as if
intent to stop and defend his outraged dignity. In a few moments the
three lions disappeared in the tall grass that fringed a big reed bed
many acres in extent.

For an hour we raked the reed bed with shot, hoping to drive them from
cover. But that was the last we saw of the lions. A little bunch of
waterbuck does were scared up, but nothing else. The lions were now
safe, for nothing less than fifty beaters could hope to dislodge them
from the dense security of the swamp.

[Drawing: _It Would Have Been Historic_]

Talk about dejection! Our ride back to town was as mournful as a ride
could be. We thought of the glory of driving through the streets of
Nairobi with a lion or two hanging over the back of the carriage. It
would have been historic. Citizens would have talked of it for years. It
would have taken an honored place in the lion-hunting literature of
Africa, for no lion hunters have ever pursued a band of lions in a
carriage and brought back a carriage-load of them.

We almost regretted having had the chance that we so heartbreakingly
lost.

But we told about it when we struck town, and before the day was over it
was the topic in hotels and clubs throughout the whole town of Nairobi.
Everybody who had a gun was resolved to go out the next day, and
interest was at a fever pitch.

We went out again the following morning, shot at wildebeests at all
known ranges, from two hundred yards up to five hundred yards--but our
luck was against us. We came back empty-handed, and our chief reward for
the morning's work was the great privilege of seeing both Mount Kenia,
ninety miles north, a