“Well, I let the reit bok 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 towards 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 became 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 away, 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 way to the bushy kloof, within about five and twenty 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 succeeded in clearing it more or less 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!  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 personal rule I never pretend 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.