"And then all of a sudden I heard a crashing of bushes and the shouting
and whistling of men, and there were the two boys coming back with the
cattle, which they had found trekking along all together. The lions
lifted their heads and listened, then without a sound bounded off--and I
fainted.
"The lions came back no more that night, and by the next morning my
nerves had got pretty straight again; but I was full of wrath when I
thought of all that I had gone through at the hands, or rather noses,
of those four lions, and of the fate of my after-ox Kaptein. He was a
splendid ox, and I was very fond of him. So wroth was I that, like a
fool, I determined to attack the whole family of them. It was worthy of
a greenhorn out on his first hunting-trip; but I did it nevertheless.
Accordingly after breakfast, having rubbed some oil upon my leg, which
was very sore from the cub's tongue, I took the driver, Tom, who did not
half like the job, and having armed myself with an ordinary double No.
12 smooth-bore, the first breech-loader I ever had, I started. I took
the smooth-bore because it shot a bullet very well; and my experience
has been that a round ball from a smooth-bore is quite as effective
against a lion as an express bullet.
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