On the 29th I returned to camp at sunrise, and swallowing a cup of hot coffee, which my cook, having heard the shot and divined its purport, had prepared for me, I took up the tracks with two camelmen, letting Géli and Hassan sleep in camp. We followed them till noon, the sun being fearfully hot; and either through the unskilfulness of my trackers, or through the absence of blood on the track causing me to lose heart in the fearful _Jilál_ heat, we had to leave the trail at a stony ravine; and in the afternoon we returned to camp, tired out.
Swallowing some food, I took a short sleep; and towards sunset I went out again with Géli and Hassan into the bush to the west. Suddenly Géli pointed, and saying “_Libah!_” (Lions!) started to run across an open plain of bare red earth; and there, three hundred yards away, were a lioness and young lion reclining by the stem of a tall, shady thorn-tree, looking at us. I had been searching for rhinoceros, and was burdened with my double four-bore rifle, weighing twenty-two pounds, so when Géli started running he at once got ahead of me, and Hassan, carried away by the excitement, followed suit. The brutes, seeing three men running across the plain towards them, stood up, stretched themselves, and giving a toss of the tail and a savage growl, they cantered easily away across the sun-baked earth in full view, and plunged into the low mimósa jungle beyond. I ran up to Géli very much put out, and snatching my ·577 Express from his hand, and giving him the heavy rifle to retard his pace, I plunged into the bush and grass after the lions, but the grass was so thick and dry that I soon overran the almost invisible tracks, and though we made several tries back on to the red soil, we eventually lost them, and I returned to camp disgusted with the afternoon’s entertainment, and lectured my men in rather a wrathful way on the folly of out-running me.
On the next night we all awoke at the same time, while the moon was still low, having been roused by the disturbance of the pool; and we made so much noise in throwing off our blankets and getting ready that a rhinoceros, which had come down to the pool, heard us and made off. I fired the four-bore, and my bullet caught it in the shoulder, sending it galloping up the bank, snorting as before. On this night the beast waited, listening close behind my hiding-place for nearly ten minutes; then all sounds ceased, and I thought it must be dead. It had, however, slipped quietly away; so there was nothing to be done, and we went to sleep. When we woke again the moon was well up, it being about two o’clock in the morning. Géli had awakened me, having seen something pass among the bushes on our bank of the river, between my hiding-place and the camp.