第5章
"Mashune thrust the Martini rifle into my hands,whispering that it was loaded.I lifted it and covered the lioness,but found that even in that light I could not make out the foresight of the Martini.As it would be madness to fire without doing so,for the result would probably be that I should wound the lioness,if,indeed,I did not miss her altogether,I lowered the rifle;and,hastily tearing a fragment of paper from one of the leaves of my pocket-book,which Ihad been consulting just before I went to sleep,I proceeded to fix it on to the front sight.But all this took a little time,and before the paper was satisfactorily arranged,Mashune again gripped me by the arm,and pointed to a dark heap under the shade of a small mimosa tree which grew not more than ten paces from the skerm.
"'Well,what is it?'I whispered;'I can see nothing.'
"'It is another lion,'he answered.
"'Nonsense!thy heart is dead with fear,thou seest double;'and Ibent forward over the edge of the surrounding fence,and stared at the heap.
"Even as I said the words,the dark mass rose and stalked out into the moonlight.It was a magnificent,black-maned lion,one of the largest I had ever seen.When he had gone two or three steps he caught sight of me,halted,and stood there gazing straight towards us;--he was so close that I could see the firelight reflected in his wicked,greenish eyes.
"'Shoot,shoot!'said Mashune.'The devil is coming--he is going to spring!'
"I raised the rifle,and got the bit of paper on the foresight,straight on to a little path of white hair just where the throat is set into the chest and shoulders.As I did so,the lion glanced back over his shoulder,as,according to my experience,a lion nearly always does before he springs.Then he dropped his body a little,and I saw his big paws spread out upon the ground as he put his weight on them to gather purchase.In haste I pressed the trigger of the Martini,and not a moment too soon;for,as I did so,he was in the act of springing.The report of the rifle rang out sharp and clear on the intense silence of the night,and in another second the great brute had landed on his head within four feet of us,and rolling over and over towards us,was sending the bushes which composed our little fence flying with convulsive strokes of his great paws.We sprang out of the other side of the 'skerm,'and he rolled on to it and into it and then right through the fire.Next he raised himself and sat upon his haunches like a great dog,and began to roar.Heavens!how he roared!I never heard anything like it before or since.He kept filling his lungs with air,and then emitting it in the most heart-shaking volumes of sound.Suddenly,in the middle of one of the loudest roars,he rolled over on to his side and lay still,and I knew that he was dead.A lion generally dies upon his side.
"With a sigh of relief I looked up towards his mate upon the ant-heap.
She was standing there apparently petrified with astonishment,looking over her shoulder,and lashing her tail;but to our intense joy,when the dying beast ceased roaring,she turned,and,with one enormous bound,vanished into the night.
"Then we advanced cautiously towards the prostrate brute,Mashune droning an improvised Zulu song as he went,about how Macumazahn,the hunter of hunters,whose eyes are open by night as well as by day,put his hand down the lion's stomach when it came to devour him and pulled out his heart by the roots,&c.,&c.,by way of expressing his satisfaction,in his hyperbolical Zulu way,at the turn events had taken.
"There was no need for caution;the lion was as dead as though he had already been stuffed with straw.The Martini bullet had entered within an inch of the white spot I had aimed at,and travelled right through him,passing out at the right buttock,near the root of the tail.The Martini has wonderful driving power,though the shock it gives to the system is,comparatively speaking,slight,owing to the smallness of the hole it makes.But fortunately the lion is an easy beast to kill.
"I passed the rest of that night in a profound slumber,my head reposing upon the deceased lion's flank,a position that had,Ithought,a beautiful touch of irony about it,though the smell of his singed hair was disagreeable.When I woke again the faint primrose lights of dawn were flushing in the eastern sky.For a moment I could not understand the chill sense of anxiety that lay like a lump of ice at my heart,till the feel and smell of the skin of the dead lion beneath my head recalled the circumstances in which we were placed.Irose,and eagerly looked round to see if I could discover any signs of Hans,who,if he had escaped accident,would surely return to us at dawn,but there were none.Then hope grew faint,and I felt that it was not well with the poor fellow.Setting Mashune to build up the fire I hastily removed the hide from the flank of the lion,which was indeed a splendid beast,and cutting off some lumps of flesh,we toasted and ate them greedily.Lions'flesh,strange as it may seem,is very good eating,and tastes more like veal than anything else.