The soft-nosed Winchester bullet had gone straight through the chest cavity, smashing the lungs and the big blood-vessels of the heart.  Painfully he recovered his feet, and tried to come on, his ferocious courage holding out to the last; but he staggered and turned from side to side, unable to stand firmly, still less to advance at a faster pace than a walk.  He had not ten seconds to live; but it is a sound principle to take no chances with lions.  Tarlton hit him with his second bullet probably in the shoulder; and with my next shot I broke his neck.  I had stopped him when he was still a hundred yards away, and certainly no finer sight could be imagined than that of this great maned lion as he charged. [Footnote:  “African Game Trails,” pp. 192-3.]

To the man who can shoot straight, and shoot just as straight at a savage animal as at a target, African game-hunting is for part of the time not very dangerous.  Nine or ten lions or elephants or rhinoceros may be killed, without seeming risk.  The tenth time something unexpected happens, and death comes very near to the hunter.

In shooting an elephant in the forest one day, Roosevelt had what was perhaps his closest call since the bear nearly killed him, years before in Idaho.  He had just shot an elephant, when there came a surprise: 

But at that very instant, before there was a moment’s time in which to reload, the thick bushes parted immediately on my left front, and through them surged the vast bulk of a charging bull elephant, the matted mass of tough creepers snapping like packthread before his rush.  He was so close that he could have touched me with his trunk.  I leaped to one side and dodged behind a tree trunk, opening the rifle, throwing out the empty shells, and slipping in two cartridges.  Meantime Cunninghame fired right and left, at the same time throwing himself into the bushes on the other side.  Both his bullets went home, and the bull stopped short in his charge, wheeled, and immediately disappeared in the thick cover.  We ran forward, but the forest had closed over his wake.  We heard him trumpet shrilly, and then all sounds ceased. [Footnote:  “African Game Trails,” p. 251.]

CHAPTER XII

EUROPE AND AMERICA

At Khartoum Mr. Roosevelt and his son were joined by other members of his family.  They all crossed to Europe, for he had been invited by the rulers and learned bodies of a number of countries to pay them a visit.  He went to Italy, Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Holland, France, Denmark, Belgium and England, receiving the highest compliments from their rulers, honorary degrees from the universities, and a welcome from the people everywhere which had been given with such heartiness to no other American since General Grant traveled round the world after the Civil War.