Hunter Quatermains Story | Page 9

I
went to sleep, I proceeded to fix it on to the front sight. But all this took
a little time, and before the paper was satisfactorily arranged, Mashune
again gripped me by the arm, and pointed to a dark heap under the
shade of a small mimosa tree which grew not more than ten paces from
the skerm.
"'Well, what is it?' I whispered; 'I can see nothing.'
"'It is another lion,' he answered.
"'Nonsense! thy heart is dead with fear, thou seest double;' and I bent
forward over the edge of the surrounding fence, and stared at the heap.
"Even as I said the words, the dark mass rose and stalked out into the
moonlight. It was a magnificent, black-maned lion, one of the largest I
had ever seen. When he had gone two or three steps he caught sight of
me, halted, and stood there gazing straight towards us;--he was so close
that I could see the firelight reflected in his wicked, greenish eyes.
"'Shoot, shoot!' said Mashune. 'The devil is coming--he is going to
spring!'
"I raised the rifle, and got the bit of paper on the foresight, straight on
to a little path of white hair just where the throat is set into the chest
and shoulders. As I did so, the lion glanced back over his shoulder, as,
according to my experience, a lion nearly always does before he
springs. Then he dropped his body a little, and I saw his big paws
spread out upon the ground as he put his weight on them to gather
purchase. In haste I pressed the trigger of the Martini, and not a
moment too soon; for, as I did so, he was in the act of springing. The
report of the rifle rang out sharp and clear on the intense silence of the
night, and in another second the great brute had landed on his head
within four feet of us, and rolling over and over towards us, was

sending the bushes which composed our little fence flying with
convulsive strokes of his great paws. We sprang out of the other side of
the 'skerm,' and he rolled on to it and into it and then right through the
fire. Next he raised himself and sat upon his haunches like a great dog,
and began to roar. Heavens! how he roared! I never heard anything like
it before or since. He kept filling his lungs with air, and then emitting it
in the most heart- shaking volumes of sound. Suddenly, in the middle
of one of the loudest roars, he rolled over on to his side and lay still,
and I knew that he was dead. A lion generally dies upon his side.
"With a sigh of relief I looked up towards his mate upon the ant-heap.
She was standing there apparently petrified with astonishment, looking
over her shoulder, and lashing her tail; but to our intense joy, when the
dying beast ceased roaring, she turned, and, with one enormous bound,
vanished into the night.
"Then we advanced cautiously towards the prostrate brute, Mashune
droning an improvised Zulu song as he went, about how Macumazahn,
the hunter of hunters, whose eyes are open by night as well as by day,
put his hand down the lion's stomach when it came to devour him and
pulled out his heart by the roots, &c., &c., by way of expressing his
satisfaction, in his hyperbolical Zulu way, at the turn events had taken.
"There was no need for caution; the lion was as dead as though he had
already been stuffed with straw. The Martini bullet had entered within
an inch of the white spot I had aimed at, and travelled right through
him, passing out at the right buttock, near the root of the tail. The
Martini has wonderful driving power, though the shock it gives to the
system is, comparatively speaking, slight, owing to the smallness of the
hole it makes. But fortunately the lion is an easy beast to kill.
"I passed the rest of that night in a profound slumber, my head reposing
upon the deceased lion's flank, a position that had, I thought, a beautiful
touch of irony about it, though the smell of his singed hair was
disagreeable. When I woke again the faint primrose lights of dawn
were flushing in the eastern sky. For a moment I could not understand
the chill sense of anxiety that lay like a lump of ice at my heart, till the
feel and smell of the skin of the dead lion beneath my head recalled the

circumstances in which we were placed. I rose, and eagerly looked
round to see if I could discover any signs of Hans, who, if he had
escaped accident, would surely return to