H. Rider Haggard

“ Naturally I was considerably pleased with myself, and having again loaded up, went on to look for the black-maned beauty which had killed Kaptein. Slowly and with the greatest care I proceeded up the kloof, searching every bush and tuft of grass as I went. It was wonderfully exciting work, for I never was sure from one moment to another but that he would be on me. I took comfort, however, from the reflection that a lion rarely attacks a man—rarely, I say; sometimes he does, as you will see—unless he is cornered or wounded.
"I must have been out for nearly an hour hunting after the lion. ”

“ Not a breath of air stirred the quiet trees, and the shadows did not even quiver; they only grew. It was very oppressive and very lonely, for there was not a sign of the cattle or the boys. I was quite thankful for the society of old Kaptein, who was lying down contentedly against the disselboom, chewing the cud with a good conscience.
"Presently, however, Kaptein began to get restless. First he snorted, then he got up and snorted again. I could not make it out, so like a fool I got down off the wagon-box to have a look round, thinking it might be the lost oxen coming. ”

“ From the further edge of this pan the ground sloped up again to a great cleft, or nullah, which had been out out by the action of water and was pretty thickly sprinkled with bush, among which grew some large trees, I forget of what sort.
"It at once struck me that the dry pan would be a likely place to find my friends in, as there is nothing a lion is fonder of than lying up in reeds, through which he can see things without being seen himself. ”

“ Thank heavens! his great teeth had not crushed my thigh bone; but I was losing a great deal of blood, and had it not been for the timely arrival of Tom, with whose aid I got the handkerchief off my wrist and tied it round my leg, twisting it tight with a stick, I think I should have bled to death.
"Well, it was a just reward for my folly in trying to tackle a family of lions single-handed. The odds were too long. I have been lame ever since, and shall be till my dying day; in the month of March the wound always troubles me a great deal, and every three years it breaks out raw. ”

“ 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 smoothbore, the first breechloader I ever had, I started. I took the smoothbore because it shot a bullet very well; and my experience has been that a round ball from a smoothbore is quite as effective against a lion as an express bullet. The lion is soft, and not a difficult animal to finish if you hit him anywhere in the body. A buck takes far more killing. ”

“ I danced and rubbed, and got it more or less clear just in time to see the tail of the last lion vanishing round the bushes up the kloof.
"If ever a man was mad, I was that man. It was too bad; and such a shot in the open, too! However, I was not going to be beaten, so I just turned and marched for the kloof. Tom, the driver, begged and implored me not to go, but though as a general rule I never pretended to be very brave (which I am not) , I was determined that I would either kill those lions or they should kill me. So I told Tom that he need not come unless he liked, but I was going ”

“ I turned my back for a minute, and when I looked round again, they were all gone except Kaptein here, who was rubbing his back against a tree.'
"'You mean that you have been asleep, and let them stray, you villain. I will rub your back against a stick,' I answered, feeling very angry, for it was not a pleasant prospect to be stuck up in that fever trap for a week or so while we were hunting for the oxen. 'Off you go, and you too, Tom, and mind you don't come back till you have found them. They have trekked back along the Middelburg Road, and are a dozen miles off by now, I'll be bound. ”

“ He is persuaded that a white people, of whom he has heard rumors all his life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the vast, still unexplored interior, and his great ambition is to find them before he dies. ”

“ I whipped round and let drive a snapshot that tipped him head over heels, breaking his back within two inches of the root of the tail, and there he lay, helpless but glaring. Tom afterward killed him with his assegai. I opened the breech of the gun, and hurriedly pulled out the old case, which, to judge from what ensued, must, I suppose, have burst and left a portion of its fabric sticking to the barrel. ”

“ When they had died, the other inhabitants of the kraal had taken the cattle and gone away, leaving the poor old woman, who was helpless from age and infirmity, to perish of starvation or disease, as the case might be. ”