But all the time a firm hand and a true eye held the bead of the rifle sight to close pursuit of the lion's every move, so held it till only a narrow sixteen yards separated man and beast. Then the Sahib's rifle cracked; and, with marvellous nerve, Brown snapped his camera a second later and caught the picture of the kill. Hitting the beast squarely in the forehead just at the take-on of a bound, the heavy .577 bullet cleaned out the lion's brain pan and killed him instantly, his body turning in mid-air and hitting the ground inert. A better rifle-shot would be impossible, and as good a camera snapshot has certainly never been made in the very face of instant, impending, deadly peril.
A half-hour later Lion Number Two, slower of resolution than his mate, fell to the Sahib's first shot, with a broken neck, while lashing himself into fit fury for a charge. This was more even than a royal kill; each of the lions was, in size, a record among Jig-Jigga hunters, the first measuring eleven feet one inch from tip of nose to tip of tail, the second eleven feet.
And then the party marched back to camp with the trophies, Djama Aout, the head shikari, chanting paeans to his Sahib's prowess, while his mates roared a hoarse Somali chorus, and all night long, by ancient law of shikari, the camp feasted, chanted, and danced, one sable saga-maker after another chanting his pride to serve so valiant a Sahib.