“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 half-way round the pan I found the remains of a blue vilder-beeste 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 waggon, 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 grew stronger and stronger as the sun climbed higher, and forced the fire into them.  At last, after half an hour’s trouble, the flames got a hold, and began to spread out like a fan, whereupon I went 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 rietbok which had been lying in the shelter of the pan.  It must, by the way, have been a rietbok of a peculiarly confiding nature to lay itself down with the lion, like the lamb of prophecy, but I suppose the reeds were thick, and that it kept a long way off.

“Well, I let the rietbok go, and it went like the wind, and 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.