One afternoon F. and I, hunting along one of the wide grass bottom lands, caught sight of a herd of an especially fine impalla. The animals were feeding about fifty yards the other side of a small solitary bush, and the bush grew on the sloping bank of the slight depression that represented the dry stream bottom. We could duck down into the depression, sneak along it, come up back of the little bush, and shoot from very close range. Leaving the gunbearers, we proceeded to do this.
So quietly did we move that when we rose up back of the little bush a lioness lying under it with her cub was as surprised as we were!
Indeed, I do not think she knew what we were, for instead of attacking, she leaped out the other side the bush, uttering a startled snarl. At once she whirled to come at us, but the brief respite had allowed us to recover our own scattered wits. As she turned I caught her broadside through the heart. Although this shot knocked her down, F. immediately followed it with another for safety's sake. We found that actually we had just missed stepping on her tail!
The cub we caught a glimpse of. He was about the size of a setter dog. We tried hard to find him, but failed. The lioness was an unusually large one, probably about as big as the female ever grows, measuring nine feet six inches in length, and three feet eight inches tail at the shoulder.
Billy had her funny times housekeeping. The kitchen department never quite ceased marvelling at her. Whenever she went to the cook-camp to deliver her orders she was surrounded by an attentive and respectful audience. One day, after holding forth for some time in Swahili, she found that she had been standing hobnailed on one of the boy's feet.
“Why, Mahomet!” she cried. “That must hurt you! Why didn't you tell me?”
“Memsahib,” he smiled politely, “I think perhaps you move some time!”
On another occasion she was trying to tell the cook, through Mahomet as interpreter, that she wanted a tough old buffalo steak pounded, boarding-house style. This evidently puzzled all hands. They turned to in an earnest discussion of what it was all about, anyway. Billy understood Swahili well enough at that time to gather that they could not understand the Memsahib's wanting the meat “kibokoed”—FLOGGED. Was it a religious rite, or a piece of revenge? They gave it up.
“All right,” said Mahomet patiently at last. “He say he do it. WHICH ONE IS IT?”
Part of our supplies comprised tins of dehydrated fruit. One evening Billy decided to have a grand celebration, so she passed out a tin marked “rhubarb” and some cornstarch, together with suitable instructions for a fruit pudding. In a little while the cook returned.