On the 12th I sent out horsemen to collect news of lions from the karias, and to make wide circles in the jungle in quest of tracks; they found those of a family of lionesses and part-grown lions, there being seven in all; so at night we tied up a donkey three miles from camp. I was prevented from sitting up over the bait by very heavy rain coming on towards evening, so I remained in camp. Next morning we found the donkey killed by lions and eaten. Coming up in the half light of early dawn, and stooping under the bushes, I saw several hyænas, and among them a lioness, stealing away. The range was nearly two hundred yards, but I fired and missed. I followed at best pace, and after twenty minutes’ tracking I saw her head for a moment looking over a tuft of grass, as she crouched thirty yards away, but she bounded off before I had time to look over the sight. I fired a shot after her into the grass, which must have missed. We again tied up a donkey in the same place, and sat up over it. But at about ten o’clock the dry galól, upon the flat top of which we had placed my bed, gave way, breaking off at the fork of the stem, and dropping us, with guns, water-bottles, and lantern, a distance of twelve feet, to the ground! It was very dark and a heavy thunder-storm was coming up, so we lit the lantern and trudged home through the bush. We left the donkey tied up, and coming next morning to take him away, we found he had been untouched by lions, and several cowardly hyænas had prowled round him all night afraid to tackle him; so that, except in his feelings, he was unhurt.
On the morning of the 14th, having heard a lion roar not far from camp at midnight, I sent out horsemen, and at 9 A.M. they reported tracks of two lionesses. Almost simultaneously came news that a goat had been killed by a lion at a karia about five miles away. The men said it must have been a large lion by the tracks and by the sound of his roar as he had bounded away, quite unlike the voice of a lioness. So I walked there with my two hunters, arriving soon after ten o’clock, and taking the owner of the goat as my guide, I made straight for the karia where the kill had occurred. The two horsemen who had brought the news followed me, leading their horses, in red and blue khaili tobes; but I dropped these men at the karia as being too conspicuous and likely to attract the lion’s attention.
We then followed the pugs of the lion from the zeríba, the parallel lines in the red soil showing where he had dragged his victim along. The trail was difficult to follow, as the ground had been overrun by sheep during the morning. At last we came to a very small boy in charge of a flock of sheep, and he told us there were no more domestic animals farther on, and that the lion had gone into a dark jungle of khansa and durr grass. We entered the jungle, and as we rounded a khansa thicket my hunter Liban said, “There he is!” and I saw his great shock head and shoulders come from out of a black overhanging khansa bush twenty-five yards away, which had been his lair, and in which we subsequently found the body of the goat. I had only time to see his huge head and mane come indistinctly through the foliage, when he bounded away to my left, across a space of two yards of open, into a patch of durr grass six feet high. I followed him with the sight of the rifle on his shoulder as he disappeared, and the trigger being rather heavy I did not actually get it off till he was well inside the grass. The rifle went off, and a loud roar followed as he galloped on, showing that he had been hit. The roar died away at once into a suppressed growl, then all was silence.
Now came the work of following him up. Making a circuit to the right we examined the expanse of grass and jungle into which he had sprung; it was very thick and extensive, stretching to the right and left for several hundred yards, so there was nothing for it but to follow him through it. We first fired a Snider at the place where we had last heard him, at the same time throwing sticks and shouting; and then, foot by foot, we took up his path, which was bathed in blood, straight through the high grass. From the very hurried nature of my shot I did not hope to have disabled him, although the rifle I had been shooting with was a heavy eight-bore Paradox. After going another half dozen yards, as we came to a mimósa, Liban said, “He is lying dead beyond that khansa bush.” Peeping through and seeing a mass of yellow, I saw that Liban was right. Skirting round, we found a noble, yellow-maned lion, the finest I had seen, in perfect condition and in the prime of life. My natives called my attention to the peculiar position in which he was lying, under the farther side of the mimósa. He had bounded away from his lair, getting my eight-bore bullet obliquely in behind the left lung, and out at the point of the right shoulder. He had roared and bounded on with this wound, and after going fifteen yards had taken the mimósa in one spring, falling dead in his tracks. We measured the bush over which he had sprung, and found it was eighteen feet broad and eight feet high, and absence of marks on the surrounding sand showed that he could not possibly have gone round. My theory is that the wound took full effect just as he made this supreme effort, landing him practically lifeless. The skin, when taken off, measured 10 feet 11 inches from nose to tip of tail when spread without stretching or pegging out. As I knelt looking at his head, surrounded by the men, women, and children who had flocked from the karias, I only wished for an European companion to help me admire him!
In the evening I made another platform in a gudá tree three miles to the south of camp. From my tent to about a mile south of it there was gravel. I found that lions, in passing camp to go to prospect some karias to the south-west of us, avoided the gravel, no doubt because it was uncomfortable for their feet, and invariably walked over the fine red clay a little farther to the south. Hence the choice of my new hiding-place. I spread my bed on the flat top of the tree, fourteen feet from the ground. It was like a spring mattress, gently waving before a cool breeze; and we slept beautifully most of the night, hung up in the air, with a brilliant canopy of stars above us and the mysterious sea of bush around us, with lions roaring frequently during the night. Next morning I was taken off on a “wild-goose chase” to a karia six miles distant to the north, where a lioness had taken a small goat in sight of the karia people; but the sheep and camels had since been driven over the tracks and we lost her, having to abandon, besides, the search for the tracks of the lion which had roared near my machán the night before.
I remained in camp on the 15th to let the skin of the large lion dry, and again slept in the machán three miles to the south of camp. The lions roared again; for there were a pair of them, the voice of the lioness being easily distinguishable from that of her mate. They never came to the donkey, and a heavy thunder-storm drenching us and our bedding, we lit a lantern and threaded our way to camp, leading the donkey, through the darkness. Sending out horsemen next morning, the tracks of the pair could not be found anywhere, so it was decided that their roars must either have been uttered from an immense distance, or that they must have been devils! But I think that, owing to the wet weather, their voices appeared to be very much nearer than they really were.
A Snap Shot
“As he bounded away to my left.”