“I had noticed that the lioness went 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 rose 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, I went on to look for the black-maned beauty who 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 nearly an hour hunting after that 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 worked 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 boulders, in the crevices and on the top of which grew ferns, grasses, and stunted bushes.  This mass was about twenty-five feet high.  The sides of the kloof here were also very steep.  Well, I came to the top of the nullah and looked all round.  No signs of the lion.  Evidently I had either overlooked him farther 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 boulders, beginning to feel, as I did so, 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 boulders, I turned to have another look round.  I have a pretty sharp eye, but I could see nothing at all.