At First He Moved With
Such A Shaky And Uncertain Gait That I Felt
Confident That He Could Only Go A Few Yards
Before Dropping; So, As I Did Not Wish To Disturb
The Other Game Around Us By Firing A Second
Shot, I Thought It Best Just To Wait.
To my
utter astonishment, however, after he had
staggered for about sixty yards he seemed to
revive suddenly, broke into his ordinary gallop
and quickly rejoined the herd.
From that time
I lost all trace of him, though I followed up
for four or five miles.
The wildebeeste, in fact, is like Kipling's
Fuzzy-Wuzzy - "'e's generally shammin' when
'e's dead"; and my friend Rawson about this
time had an experience very similar to mine,
but attended with more serious results. He had
knocked his wildebeeste over in much the same
way, and thought it was dead; and as he was
very keen on obtaining photographs of game,
he took his stand-camera from the Indian who
carried it and proceeded to focus it on the animal's
head. When he was just about to take the
picture, he was thunderstruck to see the
wildebeeste jump up and come charging down upon him.
He sprang quickly aside, and in an instant up
went the camera into the air, followed the next
moment by the unfortunate Indian, the wildebeeste
having stuck its horn right through the man's
thigh and tossed him over its back. Fortunately
the brute fell dead after this final effort, leaving
Rawson grateful for his escape.
After abandoning the chase of my wildebeeste,
we had not gone far on our way towards the
home camp when I thought I observed something
of a reddish colour moving in a patch of long
grass, a good distance to our left front. I asked
Mahina if he could make out what it was, but
he was unable to do so, and before I could get
my field-glasses to bear, the animal, whatever it
was, had disappeared into the grass. I kept my
eye on the spot, however, and we gradually
approached it. When we were about a hundred
yards off, the reddish object again appeared;
and I saw that it was nothing less than the shaggy
head of a lion peeping over the long grass.
This time Mahina also saw what it was, and called
out, "Dekko, Sahib, sher!" ("Look, Master, a
lion!"). I whispered to him to be quiet and to
take no notice of him, while I tried my best to
follow my own advice. So we kept on, edging up
towards the beast, but apparently oblivious of his
presence, as he lay there grimly watching us.
As we drew nearer, I asked Mahina in a whisper
if he felt equal to facing a charge from the
sher if I should wound him. He answered
simply that where I went, there would he go
also; and right well he kept his word.
I watched the lion carefully out of the corner
of my eye as we closed in.
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