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Title: The Spring of a Lion
Author: H. Rider Haggard
Release Date: December 9, 2021 [eBook #66915]
Language: English
Produced by: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPRING OF A LION ***
THE
SPRING OF A LION
BY
H. RIDER HAGGARD,
_Neely's Booklet Series. No. 26, June 26, 1899. Issued weekly
$5.00 a year. Entered as second-class matter
at New York Post Office._
F. TENNYSON NEELY,
PUBLISHER,
LONDON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO.
THE SPRING OF A LION.
The story which is narrated in the following pages came to me from
the lips of my old friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Quatermain, as
we used to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening
when I was stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire.
Shortly after that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that
he immediately left England, accompanied by two companions, who were
old fellow-voyagers of his, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and
has now utterly vanished into the dark heart of Africa. He is
persuaded that a white people, of whom he has heard rumors all his
life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the vast, still unexplored
interior, and his great ambition is to find them before he dies.
This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions have
departed, and from which I shrewdly suspect they never will return.
One letter only have I received from the old gentleman, dated from a
mission station high up the Tana, a river on the east coast, about
three hundred miles north of Zanzibar; in it he says they have gone
through many hardships and adventures, but are alive and well, and
have found traces which go far toward making him hope that the
results of their wild quest may be a "magnificent and unexampled
discovery." I greatly fear, however, that all he has discovered is
death; for this letter came a long while ago, and nobody has heard a
single word of the party since. They have totally vanished.
It was on the last evening of my stay at his house that he told the
ensuing story to me and Captain Good, who was dining with him. He
had eaten his dinner and drunk two or three glasses of old port, just
to help Good and myself to the end of the second bottle. It was an
unusual thing for him to do, for he was a most abstemious man, having
conceived, as he used to say, a great horror of drink from observing
its effects upon the class of men--hunters, transport riders, and
others--among whom he had passed so many years of his life.
Consequently, the good wine took more effect on him than it would
have done on most men, sending a little flush into his wrinkled
cheeks, and making him talk more freely than usual.
Dear old man! I can see him now, as he went limping up and down the
vestibule, with his gray hair sticking up in scrubbing-brush fashion,
his shrivelled yellow face, and his large dark eyes, that were as
keen as any hawk's and yet soft as a buck's. The whole room was hung
with trophies of his numerous hunting expeditions, and he had some
story about every one of them, if only you could get him to tell
them. Generally he would not, for he was not very fond of narrating
his own adventures, but to-night the port wine made him more
communicative.
"Ah, you brute!" he said, stopping beneath an unusually large skull
of a lion, which was fixed just over the mantelpiece, beneath a long
row of guns, its jaws distended to their utmost width. "Ah, you
brute! you have given me a lot of trouble for the last dozen years,
and will, I suppose, to my dying day."
"Tell us the yarn, Quatermain," said Good. "You have often promised
to tell me, and have not."
"You had better not ask me to," he answered, "for it is a longish
one."
"All right," I said, "the evening is young, and there is some more
port."
Thus adjured, he filled his pipe from a jar of coarse-cut Boer
tobacco that was always standing on the mantelpiece, and still
walking up and down the room, began:
"It was, I think, in the March of 1869 that I was up in Sikukuni's
country. It was just after old Sequati's time, and Sikukuni had got
into power--I forget how. Any way, I was there. I had heard that
the Bapedi people had got down an enormous quantity of ivory from the
interior, and so I started with a wagon-load of goods, and came
straight away from Middelburg to try and trade some of it. It was a
risky thing to go into the country so early, on account of the fever,
but I knew that there were one or two others after that lot of ivory,
so I determined to have a try for it, and take my chance of fever. I
had got so tough from continual knocking about that I did not set it
down at much. Well, I got on all right for awhile. It is a
wonderfully beautiful piece of bush veldt, with great ranges of
mountains running through it, and round granite koppies starting up
here and there, looking out like sentinels over the rolling waste of
bush. But it is very hot--hot as a stew-pan--and when I was there
that March, which, of course, is autumn in that part of Africa, the
whole place reeked of fever. Every morning, as I trekked along down
by the Oliphant River, I used to creep out of the wagon at dawn and
look out. But there was no river to be seen--only a long line of
billows of what looked like the finest cotton wool tossed up lightly
with a pitchfork. It was the fever mist. Out from among the scrub,
too, came little spirals of vapor, as though there were hundreds of
tiny fires alight in it--reek rising from thousands of tons of
rotting vegetation. It was a beautiful place, but the beauty was the
beauty of death; and all those lines and blots of vapor wrote one
great word cross the surface of the country, and that word was
'fever.'
"It was a dreadful year of illness, that. I came, I remember, to one
little kraal of Knobnoses, and went up to see if I could get some
_maas_ (curdled buttermilk) and a few mealies. As I got near, I was
struck with the silence of the place. No children began to chatter,
and no dogs barked. Nor could I see any native sheep or cattle. The
place, though it had evidently been recently inhabited, was as still
as the bush round it, and some guinea fowl got up out of the prickly
pear bushes right at the kraal gate. I remember that I hesitated a
little before going in, there was such an air of desolation about the
spot. Nature never looks desolate when man has not yet laid his hand
upon her breast; she is only lonely. But when man has been and has
passed away, then she looks desolate.
"Well, I passed into the kraal, and went up to the principal hut. In
front of the hut was something with an old sheepskin _kaross_ (rug)
thrown over it. I stooped down and threw off the rug, and then
shrank back amazed, for under it was the body of a young woman,
recently dead. For a moment I thought of turning back, but my
curiosity overcame me; so going past the woman, I went down on my
hands and knees and crept into the hut. It was so dark that I could
not see anything, though I could smell a great deal--so I lit a
match. It was a 'tand-stickor' match, and burnt slowly and dimly,
and as the light gradually increased I made out what I thought was a
lot of people, men, women, and children, fast asleep. Presently it
burnt up brightly, and I saw that they, too, five of them altogether,
were quite dead. One was a baby. I dropped the match in a hurry,
and was making my way out of the hut as hard as I could go, when I
caught sight of two bright eyes staring out of a corner. Thinking it
was a wildcat or some such animal, I redoubled my haste, when
suddenly a voice near the eyes began first to mutter, and then to
send up a succession of awful yells. Hastily I lit another match,
and perceived that the eyes belonged to an old woman, wrapped up in a
greasy leather garment. Taking her by the arm, I dragged her out,
for she could not, or would not, come by herself, and the stench was
overpowering me. Such a sight as she was--a bag of bones, covered
over with black, shrivelled parchment. The only white thing about
her was her wool, and she seemed to be pretty well dead except for
her eyes and her voice. She thought that I was a devil come to take
her, and that is why she yelled so. Well, I got her down to the
wagon, and gave her a "tot" of Cape smoke, and then, as soon as it
was ready, poured about a pint of beef-tea down her throat, made from
the flesh of a blue vilderbeeste I had killed the day before, and
after that she brightened up wonderfully. She could talk
Zulu--indeed, it turned out that she had run away from Zululand in
T'Chaka's time--and she told me that all the people that I had seen
had died of fever. When they had died, the other inhabitants of the
kraal had taken the cattle and gone away, leaving the poor old woman,
who was helpless from age and infirmity, to perish of starvation or
disease, as the case might be. She had been sitting there for three
days among the bodies when I found her. I took her on to the next
kraal, and gave the headman a blanket to look after her, promising
him another if I found her well when I came back. I remember that he
was much astonished at my parting with two blankets for the sake of
such a worthless old creature. 'Why did I not leave her in the
bush?' he asked. Those people carry the doctrine of the survival of
the fittest to its extreme, you see.
"It was the night after I had got rid of the old woman that I made my
first acquaintance with my friend yonder," and he nodded toward the
skull that seemed to be grinning down at us in the shadow of the wide
mantelshelf. "I had trekked from dawn till eleven o'clock--a long
trek--but I wanted to get on; and then had the oxen turned out to
graze, sending the voorlooper to look after them, meaning to inspan
again about six o'clock, and trek with the moon till ten. Then I got
into the wagon and had a good sleep till half-past two or so in the
afternoon, when I got up and cooked some meat, and had my dinner,
washing it down with a pannikin of black coffee--for it was difficult
to get preserved milk in those days. Just as I had finished, and the
driver, a man called Tom, was washing up the things, in comes the
young scoundrel of a voorlooper driving one ox before him.
"'Where are the other oxen?' I asked.
"'Koos!' he said, 'Koos! (chief), the other oxen have gone away. I
turned my back for a minute, and when I looked round again, they were
all gone except Kaptein here, who was rubbing his back against a
tree.'
"'You mean that you have been asleep, and let them stray, you
villain. I will rub your back against a stick,' I answered, feeling
very angry, for it was not a pleasant prospect to be stuck up in that
fever trap for a week or so while we were hunting for the oxen. 'Off
you go, and you too, Tom, and mind you don't come back till you have
found them. They have trekked back along the Middelburg Road, and
are a dozen miles off by now, I'll be bound. Now, no words; go, both
of you.'
"Tom, the driver, swore and caught the lad a hearty kick, which he
richly deserved, and then, having tied old Kaptein up to the
disselboom with a reim, they got their assegais and sticks and
started. I would have gone too, only I knew that somebody must look
after the wagon, and I did not like to leave either of the boys with
it at night. I was in a very bad temper indeed, although I was
pretty well used to these sort of occurrences, and soothed myself by
taking a rifle and going to kill something. For a couple of hours I
poked about without seeing anything that I could get a shot at, but
at last just as I was again within seventy yards of the wagon, I put
up an old Impala ram from behind a mimosa thorn. He ran straight for
the wagon, and it was not till he was passing within a few feet of it
that I could get a decent shot at him. Then I pulled, and caught him
halfway down the spine; over he went, dead as a doornail, and a
pretty shot it was, though I ought not to say it. This little
incident put me into rather a better temper, especially as the buck
had rolled over right against the after part of the wagon, so I had
only to gut him, fix a reim round his legs, and haul him up. By the
time I had done this the sun was down, and the full moon was up, and
a beautiful moon it was. And then there came down that wonderful
hush that sometimes falls over the African bush in the early hours of
the night. No beast was moving, and no bird called. Not a breath of
air stirred the quiet trees, and the shadows did not even quiver;
they only grew. It was very oppressive and very lonely, for there
was not a sign of the cattle or the boys. I was quite thankful for
the society of old Kaptein, who was lying down contentedly against
the disselboom, chewing the cud with a good conscience.
"Presently, however, Kaptein began to get restless. First he
snorted, then he got up and snorted again. I could not make it out,
so like a fool I got down off the wagon-box to have a look round,
thinking it might be the lost oxen coming.
"Next instant I regretted it, for all of a sudden I heard an awful
roar and saw something yellow flash past me and light on poor
Kaptein. Then came a bellow of agony from the ox, and a crunch as
the lion put his teeth through the poor brute's neck, and I began to
realize what had happened. My rifle was in the wagon, and my first
thought was to get hold of it, and I turned and made a bolt for it.
I got my foot on the wheel and flung my body forward on to the wagon,
and there I stopped as if I was frozen, and no wonder, for as I was
about to spring up I heard the lion behind me, and next second I felt
the brute--ay, as plainly as I can feel this table--I felt him, I
say, sniffing at my left leg that was hanging down.
"My word! I did feel queer; I don't think that I ever felt so queer
before. I dared not move for the life of me, and the odd thing was
that I seemed to lose power over my leg, which had an insane sort of
inclination to kick out of its own mere motion--just as hysterical
people want to laugh when they ought to be particularly solemn.
Well, the lion sniffed and sniffed, beginning at my ankle and slowly
nosing away up to my thigh. I thought that he was going to get hold
then, but he did not. He only growled softly, and went back to the
ox. Shifting my head a little I got a full view of him. He was the
biggest lion I ever saw--and I have seen a great many--and he had a
most tremendous black mane. What his teeth were like you can
see--look there, pretty big ones, ain't they? Altogether he was a
magnificent animal, and as I lay there sprawling on the fore-tongue
of the wagon, it occurred to me that he would look uncommonly well in
a cage. He stood there by the carcass of poor Kaptein, and
deliberately disemboweled him as neatly as a butcher could have done.
All this while I dared not move, for he kept lifting his head and
keeping an eye on me as he lifted his bloody chops. When he had
cleaned Kaptein out, he opened his mouth and roared, and I am not
exaggerating when I say that the sound shook the wagon. Instantly
there came back an answering roar.
"'Heavens!' I thought, 'there is his mate!'
"Hardly was the thought out of my head when I caught sight in the
moonlight of the lioness bounding along through the long grass, and
after her a couple of cubs about the size of mastiffs. She stopped
within a few feet of my head, and stood and waved her tail, and fixed
me with her glowing yellow eyes; but just as I thought that all was
over, she turned, and began to feed on Kaptein, and so did the cubs.
There were the four of them within eight feet of me, growling and
quarreling, rending and tearing and crunching poor Kaptein's bones;
and there I lay, shaking with terror, and the cold perspiration
pouring out of me, feeling like another Daniel come to judgment, in a
new sense of the phrase. Presently the cubs had eaten their fill,
and began to get restless. One went round to the back of the wagon
and pulled at the Impala buck that hung there, and the other came
round my way and began the sniffing game at my leg. Indeed, he did
more than that, for, my trousers being hitched up a little, he began
to lick the bare skin with his rough tongue. The more he licked, the
more he liked it, to judge from his increased vigor and the loud
purring noise he made. Then I knew that the end had come, for in
another second his file-like tongue would have rasped through the
skin of my leg--which was luckily pretty tough--and have got to the
blood, and then there would be no chance for me. So I just lay there
and thought of my sins, and prayed to the Almighty, and thought that,
after all, life was a very enjoyable thing.
"And then all of a sudden I heard a crashing of bushes, and the
shouting and whistling of men, and there were the two boys coming
back with the cattle which they had found trekking along all
together. The lions lifted their heads and listened, and then
without a sound bounded off--and I fainted.
"The lions came back no more that night, and by the next morning my
nerves had got pretty straight again; but I was full of wrath when I
thought of all that I had gone through at the hands, or rather noses,
of those four lions, and of the fate of my after ox Kaptein. He was
a splendid ox, and I was very fond of him. So wroth was I that, like
a fool, I determined to go for the whole family of them. It was
worthy of a greenhorn out on his first hunting trip; but I did it,
nevertheless. Accordingly, after breakfast, having rubbed some oil
upon my leg, which was very sore from the cub's tongue, I took the
driver, Tom, who did not half like the job, and having armed myself
with an ordinary double No. 12 smoothbore, the first breechloader I
ever had, I started. I took the smoothbore because it shot a bullet
very well; and my experience has been that a round ball from a
smoothbore is quite as effective against a lion as an express bullet.
The lion is soft, and not a difficult animal to finish if you hit him
anywhere in the body. A buck takes far more killing.
"Well, I started, and the first thing I set to work to do was to try
to make out whereabouts the brutes lay up for the day. About three
hundred yards from the wagon was the crest of a rise covered with
single mimosa trees, dotted about in a park-like fashion, and beyond
this was a stretch of open plain running down to a dry pan, or
waterhole, which covered about an acre of ground, and was densely
clothed with reeds, now in the sere and yellow leaf. From the
further edge of this pan the ground sloped up again to a great cleft,
or nullah, which had been out out by the action of water and was
pretty thickly sprinkled with bush, among which grew some large
trees, I forget of what sort.
"It at once struck me that the dry pan would be a likely place to
find my friends in, as there is nothing a lion is fonder of than
lying up in reeds, through which he can see things without being seen
himself. Accordingly thither I went and prospected. Before I had
got halfway round the pan I found the remains of a blue vilderbeeste,
that had evidently been killed within the last three or four days and
partially devoured by lions; and from other indications about I was
soon assured that, if the family were not in the pan that day, they
spent a good deal of their spare time there. But if there, the
question was how to get them out; for it was clearly impossible to
think of going in after them unless one was quite determined to
commit suicide. Now, there was a strong wind blowing from the
direction of the wagon, across the reedy pan toward the bush-clad
kloof, or donga, and this first gave me the idea of firing the reeds,
which, as I think I told you, were pretty dry. Accordingly, Tom took
some matches and began starting little fires to the left, and I did
the same to the right. But the reeds were still green at the bottom,
and we should never have got them well alight had it not been for the
wind, which got stronger and stronger as the sun got higher, and
forced the fire into them. At last, after half an hour's trouble,
the flame got a hold, and began to spread out like a fan, whereupon I
got round to the farther side of the pan to wait for the lions,
standing well out in the open, as we stood at the copse to-day where
you shot the woodcock. It was a rather risky thing to do, but I used
to be so sure of my shooting in those days that I did not so much
mind the risk. Scarcely had I got round when I heard the reeds
parting before the onward rush of some animal. 'Now for it,' said I.
On it came. I could see that it was yellow, and prepared for action,
when, instead of a lion, out bounded a beautiful reit-bok, which had
been lying in the shelter of the pan. It must, by the way, have been
a reit-bok of a peculiarly confiding nature to lay itself down with
the lion like the lamb of prophecy, but, I suppose that the reeds
were thick, and that it kept a long way off.
"Well, I let the reit-bok go, and it went like the wind, and I kept
my eyes fixed upon the reeds. The fire was burning like a furnace
now; the flames crackling and roaring as they bit into the reeds,
sending spouts of fire twenty feet and more into the air, and making
the hot air dance above it in a way that was perfectly dazzling. But
the reeds were still half-green, and created an enormous quantity of
smoke, which came rolling toward me like a curtain, lying very low on
account of the wind. Presently, above the crackling of the fire, I
heard a startled roar, then another and another. So the lions were
at home.
"I was beginning to get excited now, for, as you fellows know, there
is nothing in experience to warm up your nerves like a lion at close
quarters, unless it is a wounded buffalo; and I got still more so
when I made out through the smoke that the lions were all moving
about on the extreme edge of the reeds. Occasionally they would pop
their heads out like rabbits from a burrow, and then, catching sight
of me standing about fifty yards out, draw them back again. I knew
that it must be getting pretty warm behind them, and that they could
not keep the game up for long; and I was not mistaken, for suddenly
all four of them broke cover together, the old black-maned lion
leading by a few yards. I never saw a more splendid sight in all my
hunting experience than those four lions bounding across the veldt,
overshadowed by the dense pall of smoke and backed by the fiery
furnace of the burning reeds.
"I reckoned that they would pass, on their road to the bushy kloof,
within about twenty-five yards of me, so, taking a long breath, I got
my gun well on to the lion's shoulder--the black-maned one--so as to
allow for an inch or two of motion, and catch him through the heart.
I was on, dead on, and my finger was just beginning to tighten on the
trigger, when suddenly I went blind--a bit of reed-ash had drifted
into my right eye. I danced and rubbed, and got it more or less
clear just in time to see the tail of the last lion vanishing round
the bushes up the kloof.
"If ever a man was mad, I was that man. It was too bad; and such a
shot in the open, too! However, I was not going to be beaten, so I
just turned and marched for the kloof. Tom, the driver, begged and
implored me not to go, but though as a general rule I never pretended
to be very brave (which I am not), I was determined that I would
either kill those lions or they should kill me. So I told Tom that
he need not come unless he liked, but I was going; and being a plucky
fellow, a Swazi by birth, he shrugged his shoulders, muttered that I
was mad or bewitched, and followed doggedly in my tracks.
"We soon got to the kloof, which was about three hundred yards in
length and but sparsely wooded, and then the real fun began. There
might be a lion behind every bush--there certainly were four lions
somewhere; the delicate question was where. I peeped and poked and
looked in every possible direction, with my heart in my mouth, and
was at last rewarded by catching a glimpse of something yellow moving
behind a bush. At the same moment, from another bush opposite me out
burst one of the cubs and galloped back toward the burnt-out pan. I
whipped round and let drive a snapshot that tipped him head over
heels, breaking his back within two inches of the root of the tail,
and there he lay, helpless but glaring. Tom afterward killed him
with his assegai. I opened the breech of the gun, and hurriedly
pulled out the old case, which, to judge from what ensued, must, I
suppose, have burst and left a portion of its fabric sticking to the
barrel. At any rate, when I tried to get in the new case it would
only enter halfway; and--would you believe it?--this was the moment
that the lioness, attracted, no doubt, by the outcry of her cub,
chose to put in an appearance. There she stood, twenty paces or so
from me, lashing her tail, and looking just as wicked as it is
possible to conceive. Slowly I stepped backward, trying to push in
the new case, and as I did so, she moved on in little runs, dropping
down after each run. The danger was imminent, and the case would not
go in. At the moment I oddly enough thought of the cartridge-maker
whose name I will not mention, and earnestly hoped that, if the
lioness got me, some condign punishment would overtake him. It would
not go in, so I tried to pull it out. It would not come out, either,
and my gun was useless if I could not shut it to use the other
barrel. I might as well have had no gun. Meanwhile I was walking
backward, keeping my eye on the lioness, who was creeping forward on
her belly without a sound, but lashing her tail and keeping her eye
on me; and in it I saw that she was coming in a few seconds more. I
dashed my wrist and the palm of my hand against the brass rim of the
cartridge till the blood poured from them--look, there are the scars
of it to this day!"
Here Quatermain held up his right hand to the light, and showed us
seven or eight white cicatrices just where the wrist is set into the
hand.
"But it was not of the slightest use," he went on; "the cartridge
would not move. I only hope that no other man will ever be put in
such an awful position. The lioness gathered herself together, and I
gave myself up for lost, when suddenly Tom shouted out from somewhere
in my rear:
"'You are walking on to the wounded cub; turn to the right.'
"I had the sense, dazed as I was, to take the hint, and slewing round
at right-angles, but still keeping my eyes on the lioness, I
continued my backward walk.
"To my intense relief, with a low growl she straightened herself,
turned, and bounded off further up the kloof.
"'Come on, Inkoos,' said Tom, 'let's get back to the wagon.'
"'All right, Tom,' I answered. 'I will when I have killed those
three other lions,' for by this time I was bent on shooting them as I
never remember being bent on anything before or since. 'You can go
if you like, or you can get up a tree.'
"He considered the position a little, and then he very wisely got up
a tree. I wish that I had done the same.
"Meanwhile I had got out my knife, which had an extractor in it, and
succeeded after some difficulty in hauling out the case which had so
nearly been the cause of my death, and removing the obstruction in
the barrel. It was very little thicker than a postage-stamp;
certainly not thicker than a piece of writing-paper. This done, I
loaded the gun, bound my handkerchief round my wrist and hand to
stanch the flowing of the blood, and started on again.
"I had noticed that the lioness went back into a thick green bush, or
rather cluster of bushes, growing near the water, for there was a
little stream running down the kloof, about fifty yards higher up,
and for this I made. When I got there, however, I could see nothing,
so I took up a big stone and threw it into the bushes. I believe
that it hit the other cub, for out it came with a rush, giving me a
broadside shot, of which I promptly availed myself, knocking it over
dead. Out, too, came the lioness like a flash of light, but quick as
she went, I managed to put the other bullet into her ribs, so that
she rolled right over three times like a shot rabbit. I instantly
got two more cartridges into the gun, and as I did so, the lioness
got up again and came crawling toward me on her fore-paws, roaring
and groaning, and with such an expression of diabolical fury on her
countenance as I have not often seen. I shot her again through the
chest, and she fell over on to her side quite dead.
"That was the first and last time that I ever killed a brace of lions
right and left, and, what is more, I never heard of anybody else
doing it. Naturally I was considerably pleased with myself, and
having again loaded up, went on to look for the black-maned beauty
which had killed Kaptein. Slowly and with the greatest care I
proceeded up the kloof, searching every bush and tuft of grass as I
went. It was wonderfully exciting work, for I never was sure from
one moment to another but that he would be on me. I took comfort,
however, from the reflection that a lion rarely attacks a
man--rarely, I say; sometimes he does, as you will see--unless he is
cornered or wounded.
"I must have been out for nearly an hour hunting after the lion.
Once I thought I saw something move in a clump of tambouki grass, but
I could not be sure, and when I trod out the grass I could not find
him.
"At last I got up to the head of the kloof, which made a cul-de-sac.
It was formed of a wall of rock about fifty feet high. Down this
rock trickled a little waterfall, and in front of it, some seventy
feet from its face, was a great piled-up mass of bowlders, in the
crevices and on the top of which grew ferns and grass and stunted
bushes. This mass was about twenty-five feet high. The sides of the
kloof here were also very steep. Well, I got up to the top of the
nullah and looked all around. No signs of the lion. Evidently I had
either overlooked him further down, or he had escaped right away. It
was very vexatious; but still three lions were not a bad bag for one
gun before dinner, and I was fain to be content. Accordingly I
departed back again, making my way round the isolated pillar of
bowlders, and beginning to feel that I was pretty well done up with
excitement and fatigue, and should be more so before I had skinned
those three lions. When I had got, as nearly as I could judge, about
eighteen yards past the pillar or mass of bowlders, I turned to have
another look round. I have a pretty sharp eye, but I could see
nothing at all.
"Then, on a sudden, I saw something sufficiently alarming, On the top
of the mass of bowlders opposite to me, standing out clear against
the rock beyond, was the huge black-maned lion. He had been
crouching there, and now arose as though by magic. There he stood,
lashing his tail, just like a statue of the animal on the gateway of
Northumberland House that I have seen a picture of. But he did not
stand long. Before I could fire--before I could do more than get the
gun to my shoulder--he sprang straight up and out from the rock, and
driven by the impetus of that one mighty bound came hurtling through
the air toward me.
"Heavens! how grand he looked, and how awful! High into the air he
flew, describing a great arc. Just as he touched the highest point
of his spring I fired. I did not dare to wait, for I saw that he
would clear the whole space and land right upon me. Without a sight,
almost without aim, I fired as one would fire a snapshot at snipe.
The bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing
sound caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second
I was swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low creeper-clad
bush, which broke the shock), and the lion was on the top of me, and
the next those great white teeth of his had met in my thigh--I heard
them grate against the bone, I yelled out in agony, for I did not
feel in the least benumbed and happy, like Dr. Livingstone--whom, by
the way, I knew very well--and gave myself up for dead. But
suddenly, as I did so, the lion's grip on my thigh loosened, and he
stood over me, swaying to and fro, his huge mouth, from which the
blood was gushing, wide opened. Then he roared, and the sound shook
the rocks.
"To and fro he swung, and suddenly the great head dropped on me,
knocking all the breath from my body, and he was dead. My bullet had
entered in the center of his chest and passed out on the right side
of the spine about halfway down the back.
"The pain of my wound kept me from fainting, and, as soon as I got my
breath, I managed to drag myself from under him. Thank heavens! his
great teeth had not crushed my thigh bone; but I was losing a great
deal of blood, and had it not been for the timely arrival of Tom,
with whose aid I got the handkerchief off my wrist and tied it round
my leg, twisting it tight with a stick, I think I should have bled to
death.
"Well, it was a just reward for my folly in trying to tackle a family
of lions single-handed. The odds were too long. I have been lame
ever since, and shall be till my dying day; in the month of March the
wound always troubles me a great deal, and every three years it
breaks out raw. I need scarcely add that I never traded the lot of
ivory at Sikukuni's. Another man got it--a German--and made five
hundred pounds out of it, after paying expenses. I spent the next
month on the broad of my back, and was a cripple for six months after
that. And now I've told you the yarn, so I will have a drop of
Hollands and go to bed."
THE END.
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