“Now for an adventure with a Lion, which I have reserved for the last. On Friday the old Masara captain paid me a visit. He had seen a Lion in the path, and left a lot of Masaras to watch him. I had been working hard all day in the hot sun with an adze, making a dissel-boom for the wagon, and was tired, lame, and shaky in the arms, and did not feel at all up to the mark for rifle-shooting; but I ordered ‘Ferns’ to be saddled, who was also not at all fresh, having had a tremendous burst in the morning across a flat after a lean Eland Cow. Just after, I caught sight of about twenty-five Masaras sitting down, all armed to the teeth with shields and assegais. My attention was attracted to a Kaffir skull, which struck me as a bad omen, and the thought entered my head that it might be my fate to lay mine to bleach there. I did not, however, suffer this thought to unnerve me, but proceeded, and found that the Lion had decamped. The Masaras followed his spoor about a couple of miles, when he broke cover. I did not see him at first, but gave chase in the direction in which the Masaras pointed, saw him, and followed for about 1,000 yards, as he had a long start, when he stood in a nasty thorn thicket. I dismounted at about sixty or seventy yards, and shot at him. I could only see his outline, and that very indistinctly, and he dropped so instantaneously that I thought I had shot him dead. I remounted and reloaded, and took a short circle, and stood up in my stirrup to catch a sight of him. His eyes glared so savagely, and he lay crouched in so natural a position, with his ears alone erect, the points black as night, that I saw in a moment I had missed him. I was then about eighty yards from him, and was weighing the chances of getting a shot at him from behind an immense ant-heap, about fifty yards nearer. I had just put the Horse in motion with that intention when on he came with a tremendous roar, and ‘Ferns’ whipped round like a top, and away at full speed. My Horse is a fast one, and has run down the Gemsbok, one of the fleetest Antelopes, but the way the Lion ran him in was terrific. In an instant I was at my best pace, leaning forward, rowels deep into my Horse’s flanks, looking back over my left shoulder over a hard, flat, excellent galloping ground. On came the Lion, two strides to my one. I never saw anything like it, and never want to do so again. To turn in the saddle and shoot darted across my mind when he was within three strides of me, but on second thoughts I gave a violent jerk on the near rein, and a savage dig at the same time with the off-heel, armed with a desperate rowel, just in the nick of time, as the old manikin bounded by me, grazing my right shoulder with his, and all but unhorsing me, but I managed to right myself by clinging to the near stirrup-leather. He immediately slackened his speed. As soon as I could pull up, which was not all at once, as ‘Ferns’ had his mettle up, I jumped off, and made a very