Instantly Marlow rushed a messenger away to fetch the _Sahib_, and he and the pony men then took the trail at a run. Within two hours the pony men succeeded in circling the quarry and stopping it in a mimosa thicket. Shortly thereafter, while they were circling and shouting about the thicket to prevent a charge before the _Sahib's_ arrival, an incident occurred which proves alike the utter fearlessness and the marvellous knowledge of the game of the Somali. Suddenly out of the shadows of the thicket sprang one of the lions and launched himself like a thunderbolt upon one of the pony men, bearing horse and rider to the ground. Losing his spear in the fall and held fast by one leg beneath his horse, the rider was defenceless. However, he seized a thorny stick and began beating the lion across the face, while the lion tore at the pony's flank and quarters. Then down from his horse sprang another pony man, and knowing he could not kill the lion with his spear quickly enough to save his companion, approached and crouched directly in front of the lion till his own face was scarcely two feet from the lion's, and there made such frightful grimaces and let off such shrill shrieks, that, frightened from his prey, the lion slunk snarling to the edge of the thicket. Just at this moment the _Sahib_ raced upon the scene, accompanied by his Secretary, H. Morgan Brown. In the run he had far outdistanced his gun-bearers. Marlow was unarmed and Brown carried nothing but a camera. Thus the _Sahib's_ single-shot .577 rifle was the only effective weapon in the party, and for it he did not even have a single spare cartridge. The one little cylinder of brass within the chamber of his rifle, with the few grains of powder and nickeled lead it held, was the only certain safeguard of the group against death or mangling. All this must have flashed across the _Sahib's_ mind as he leaped from his pony and took stand in the open, sixty steps from where the lion stood roaring and savagely lashing his tail. A little back of the _Sahib_ and to his left stood Brown with his camera, beside him Marlow. Instantly, firm planted on his feet, the _Sahib_ threw the rifle to his face for a steady standing shot. But quicker even than this act, instinctively, the furious King of Beasts had marked the giant bulk of the _Sahib_ as the one foeman of the half-score round him worthy of his gleaming ivory weapons, and at him straight he charged the very instant the gun was levelled, coming in great bounds that tossed clouds of dust behind him, coming with hoarse roars at every bound, roars to shake nerves not made of steel and still the beating of the stoutest heart. On came the lion, and there stood the _Sahib_--on and yet on--till it must have seemed to his companions that the _Sahib_ was frozen in his tracks.