Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/105

 foolish but nevertheless watched him go through my pet lion bed. Only a few minutes later McCutcheon pointed toward the upper end of the stream and said:

"What is that?"

"My pair of lions," I answered.

They were going up the hill exactly as they had three years before except this time they did not separate. We watched them to the top of the hill. We started out to head them off. As we reached the top of the hill to one side of where they had gone, we heard a lion grunt behind us. There, about a hundred and twenty-five yards away, were the lion and lioness apparently in a very nasty humour. We all crouched down, and as we did so the lions rose up to see us. I said to Mrs. Akeley:

"Shoot whenever you are ready."

I was pretty nervous, for a couple of mad lions in the grass make a very bad outlook.

She fired and missed clean. The lioness began lashing her flanks. Mrs. Akeley fired again. The lion fell dead with a bullet through his brain.

McCutcheon and I urged each other to shoot the lioness, who, in the meantime, bolted and got away. I have handled nearly fifty lions, but this one that Mrs. Akeley killed was the largest of all and he had a good yellow mane. I can't prove that it was the same pair I had seen three years before. What we know of lions is against it, but I still like to think it was. This was Mrs. Akeley's first lion—a splendid trophy, cleanly killed.