When it came up, all the men crowded round, with horror on their faces, and asked which of the Sahibs had been killed, but I got up and said, “Neither,” and mounting a camel, directed the camelman to follow the hoof-marks of the ponies in the turf. How I managed to sit on the camel in my weak and dazed condition, I do not know. I must have dozed, for the next thing I saw was a group of dismounted horsemen in front of my camel, and my brother standing over the most splendid black-maned lion I have ever seen.
Jungle of “Hig” Aloes and “Guda” Thorn-Trees.
Henweina Valley, Gán-Libah Mountain in the distance. (From Photograph by the Author.)
I attribute my not having stopped the lioness to the fact that I had been shooting with a very good .577 double rifle, but in the course of our journeys the triggers had become rather stiff, making me jerk them off; and both my bullets, going low, had passed through the brute’s right foot, making small clean wounds, without expanding. E⸺, who had his gun open and was pushing in a fresh cartridge, had been horrified to see both my shots strike up the ground beyond the lioness.
Our two hunters, unlike most Somális, who are not generally a bit afraid of lions, had retired to a little distance. E⸺ said that after firing the second shot I had jumped to the right in a perfectly collected manner, but the lioness had slewed round her tail like the rudder of a boat, and slightly changing her course, she had hit me like a battering ram and sent me head over heels. The stock of the rifle was afterwards found to be badly smashed, either against my shoulder or by falling on the ground, and a patch of skin off her nose showed where the muzzle had apparently caught her as I held the gun at the “present” after firing. There was also an extensive bruise, about the size of the recoil-pad, on my right shoulder. The lioness lay on me, shaking me savagely and grabbing at my arm, and E⸺, finding he could not fire without the chance of hitting me too, decreased his distance at a run from seventy yards to only five; and she then came for him with a grunt, and he stretched her dead at his feet with a bullet in the chest.
When my brother, having left me in the care of my hunter Jáma, galloped after the other horsemen, he found them halted round a tuft of high grass, having run the lion to a standstill. The horse was the same which he had ridden when chasing the hartebeest, and it had become very lazy from the heat of the sun. The saddle was an uncomfortable doubled-peaked Somáli one, and the stirrups being only intended for the big toe, were of course useless to him. Thus sorrily equipped, E⸺ walked the horse forward cautiously towards the tuft of grass, and while he was still sixty yards from it, the lion poked up his great head to have a look at him. E⸺ pulled in, and, dropping the reins, took a shot into the grass where he judged the lion’s chest to be. The brute promptly came on, and E⸺ had only time to pick up the reins in a bunch and turn the pony round, and try to get him to move by belabouring him over the quarters with the barrels of his rifle, when the lion arrived! My brother escaped unharmed, however, for before he could get into position to fire, the lion pulled up, and fell over on his side gasping; and the next moment he was dead.
When we cut him open we found that the shot fired at him when in the tuft of grass had entered his chest, and when we held the heart up to the light a jagged hole showed where a piece of lead had passed through it. Yet he had galloped fifty yards, and nearly made good his charge before giving in.