The lions were not aware of this, and a quarrel among themselves commenced after their imagined victory. One huge beast reared to half its full height and placed its fore paws upon the body of the prostrate buffalo, while at the head and the hindquarters an angry lion clutched the dead body in its spreading paws, and growled at the possessor of the centre. This formed a grand picture within only a few yards' distance, but a couple of shots from either rifle stretched two lions rolling upon the ground, and the third, terrified at the unexpected reports, bounded into the thick covert and disappeared. A very good sportsman named Johann Schmidt, a Bavarian who died in my service when in Africa, killed two lions in the act of attacking a giraffe. I saw the skeletons of these animals in the bed of the river Royan a few days after the incident. At that dry season of the year the Royan was devoid of water, except at certain bends where the current had scooped out a deep hole beneath the bank. Johann Schmidt was a poor man, who could not afford the luxury of first-rate rifles; he therefore did his best with most inferior arms, one of which was a light double-barrelled smooth-bore muzzle-loader No. 16. This was a French gun, for which he had given 50 francs at Cairo. By some chance, this common little weapon shot remarkably well with ball and 3 drams of powder. It became his favourite companion. He was strolling one day along the bank of the Royan in Abyssinia, looking carefully down its sandy bed, when he came near to a water-hole in the long intervals, and he suddenly heard the peculiar sounds of a great encounter. The dust was flying high in the air, and as he approached the spot, within the yellow surface of the river's bed, he saw a cloud of sand, in the centre of which was the large body and long neck of a bull giraffe struggling against the attack of two lions. One of these was fastened upon its throat, while the other was mounted upon its hind-quarters, where it was holding on with teeth and claws. Johann concealed himself behind a large tree which grew upon the bank; this abrupt margin was about 20 feet above the river's bed, and not 50 yards from the scene of a hopeless conflict.