“We were waked up suddenly by hearing one of the Oxen bellowing and the Dogs barking. It was moderately dark, and I seized Clifton’s double rifle, and rushed out, not knowing where, when I saw the driver perched on the top of a temporary hut, made of grass, about six feet high, roaring lustily for a doppè (cap). I scrambled up just as the poor Ox ceased his cries, and heard the Lions growling and roaring on the top of him, not more than fourteen yards from where we were, but it was too dark to see them. I fired, however, in the direction of the sound, and just above the body of the Ox, which I could distinguish tolerably well, as it was a black one. Diza (the driver) followed my example; and, as the Lions did not take the least notice, I fired my second barrel, and was just proceeding to load my own gun, which Jack had brought me, when I was aware, for a single instant only, that the Lion was coming; and the same moment I was knocked half-a-dozen somersaults backwards off the hut, the brute striking me in the chest with his head. I gathered myself up in a second, and made a dash at a fence just behind me, and scrambled through it, gun in hand, but the muzzle was choked with dirt. I then made for the wagon, and got on the box, where I found all the Kaffirs, who could not get inside, sticking like Monkeys, and Diza perched on the top. How he got there seemed to me a miracle, as he was alongside me when the brute charged. A minute or two afterwards one of them marched off a Goat, one of five that were tethered by the foot to the hut that we had so speedily evacuated. “Diza, thinking he had a chance, fired from the top of the wagon, and the recoil knocked him backwards on to the tent, which broke his fall. It was a most ludicrous sight altogether. After that we were utterly defeated, and the brutes were allowed to eat their meal unmolested, which they continued to do for some time, growling fiercely all the while. The Kaffirs said there were five in all. I fired once again, but without effect; and we all sat shivering with cold without any clothes on till near daybreak, when our enemies beat a retreat, and I was not sorry to turn in again between the blankets. I was just beginning to get warm again when I was aroused by a double shot, and rushed out on hearing that the driver and after-rider had shot the Lion. We went to the spot, and found a fine Lioness dead, with a bullet through the ribs from the after-rider; a good shot, as she was at least 150 yards off. Another had entered the neck just behind the head, and travelled all along the spine nearly to the root of the tail. I claimed the shot, and forthwith proceeded to skin her. I cut out the ball; it proved to be my shot out of Clifton’s rifle. This accounted for her ferocious onslaught. The after-rider was rather chopfallen at having to give her up to the rightful owner.