One of the boys made her out first, crouched under
a bush thirty-two yards away. Even as I raised the rifle she saw
us and charged. I caught her in the chest before she had come ten
feet. The heavy bullet stopped her dead. Then she recovered and
started forward slowly, very weak, but game to the last. Another
shot finished her.
The remarkable point of this incident was the action of the
little Springfield bullet. Evidently the very high velocity of
this bullet from its shock to the nervous system had delivered a
paralyzing blow sufficient to knock out the lioness for the time
being. Its damage to tissue, however, was slight. Inasmuch as the
initial shock did not cause immediate death, the lioness
recovered sufficiently to be able, two hours later, to take the
offensive. This point is of the greatest interest to the student
of ballistics; but it is curious to even the ordinary reader.
That is a very typical example of finding lions by sheer chance.
Generally a man is out looking for the smallest kind of game when
he runs up against them. Now happened to follow an equally
typical example of tracking.
The next day after the killing of the lioness Memba Sasa, Kongoni
and I dropped off the bench, and hunted greater kudu on a series
of terraces fifteen hundred feet below. All we found were two
rhino, some sing-sing, a heard of impalla, and a tremendous
thirst.
