taken one light bullet and five heavy ones with hardly a wince. Memba
Sasa uttered a loud grunt of satisfaction when she went down for good.
He had the Springfield reloaded and cocked, right at my elbow.

Hill's gunboy hovered uncertainly some distance in the rear. The sight
of the charging lioness had been too much for him and he had bolted. He
was not actually up a tree; but he stood very near one. He lost the gun
and acquired a swift kick.

Our friends and the men now came up. The dogs made a great row over the
dead lioness. She was measured and skinned to accompaniment of the usual
low-hummed chantings. We had with us a small boy of ten or twelve years
whose job it was to take care of the dogs and to remove ticks. In fact
he was known as the Tick Toto. As this was his first expedition afield,
his father took especial pains to smear him with fat from the lioness.
This was to make him brave. I am bound to confess the effect was not
immediate.




XIX.

THE DOGS.


I soon discovered that we were hunting lions with the assistance of the
dogs; not that the dogs were hunting lions. They had not lost any lions,
not they! My mental pictures of the snarling, magnificent king of beasts
surrounded by an equally snarling, magnificent pack vanished into thin