Even As It Was, I Had
Barely Time To Swing Myself Up Out Of His Reach
Before He Arrived At The Foot Of The Tree.
When the lion found he was too late, he
started to limp back to the thicket; but by this
Time I had seized the carbine from Mahina, and
the first shot I fired from it seemed to give him
his quietus, for he fell over and lay motionless.
Rather foolishly, I at once scrambled down from
the tree and walked up towards him. To my
surprise and no little alarm he jumped up and
attempted another charge. This time, however,
a Martini bullet in the chest and another in the
head finished him for good and all; he dropped
in his tracks not five yards away from me, and
died gamely, biting savagely at a branch which
had fallen to the ground.
By this time all the workmen in camp, attracted
by the sound of the firing, had arrived on the
scene, and so great was their resentment against
the brute who had killed such numbers of their
comrades that it was only with the greatest
difficulty that I could restrain them from tearing
the dead body to pieces. Eventually, amid the
wild rejoicings of the natives and coolies, I had
the lion carried to my boma, which was close at
hand. On examination we found no less than
six bullet holes in the body, and embedded only
a little way in the flesh of the back was the slug
which I had fired into him from the scaffolding
about ten days previously.
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