eighty yards away. I took as good a sight as I could and pulled trigger.
The recoil knocked me clear off the boulder, but as I fell I saw his
tail go up and knew that I had hit. At once Clifford Hill and I jumped
up on the rock again, but the lion had moved out of sight. By this time,
however, the sound of the shots and the smell of blood had caused the
dogs to close in. They did not, of course, attempt to attack the lion,
nor even to get very near him, but their snarling and barking showed us
the beast's whereabouts. Even this much is bad judgment on their part,
as a number of them have been killed at it. The thicket burst into an
unholy row.

We all manoeuvred rapidly for position. Again luck was with me, for
again I saw his great head, the mane standing out all around it; and
for the second time I planted a heavy bullet square in his chest. This
stopped his advance; he lay down. His head was up and his eyes glared,
as he uttered the most reverberating and magnificent roars and growls.
The dogs leapt and barked around him. We came quite close, and I planted
my fourth bullet in his shoulder. Even this was not enough. It took a
fifth in the same place to finish him, and he died at last biting great
chunks of earth.

The howls from the hill top ceased. All gathered to marvel at the lion's
immense size. He measured three feet nine inches at the shoulder, and
nine feet eleven inches between stakes, or ten feet eleven inches along
contour. This is only five inches under record. We weighed him
piecemeal, after a fashion, and put him between 550 and 600 pounds.

But these are only statistics, and mean little unless a real attempt is
made to visualize them. As a matter of fact, his mere height--that of a
medium-size zebra-was little unless accented by the impression of his