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pass the time used to go fishing for big barbel in the river.
A little Arab mare used to carry my luncheon basket one
of the salted dun breed you got at Timbuctoo in the old
days. Well, one morning I had good sport, and the mare
was unaccountably restless. I could hear her whinnying and
squealing and stamping her feet, and I kept soothing her
with my voice while my mind was intent on fish. I could
see her all the time, as I thought, out of a corner of my eye,
tethered to a tree twenty yards away. After a couple of hours
I began to think of food. I collected my fish in a tarpaulin
bag, and moved down the stream towards the mare, trolling
my line. When I got up to her I flung the tarpaulin on her
back -’ He paused and looked round.
‘It was the smell that gave me warning. I turned my head
and found myself looking at a lion three feet off ... An old
man-eater, that was the terror of the village ... What was
left of the mare, a mass of blood and bones and hide, was
behind him.’
‘What happened?’ I asked. I was enough of a hunter to
know a true yarn when I heard it.
‘I stuffed my fishing-rod into his jaws, and I had a pis-
tol. Also my servants came presently with rifles. But he left
his mark on me.’ He held up a hand which lacked three fin-
gers.
‘Consider,’ he said. ‘The mare had been dead more than
an hour, and the brute had been patiently watching me ever
since. I never saw the kill, for I was accustomed to the mare’s
fretting, and I never marked her absence, for my conscious-
ness of her was only of something tawny, and the lion filled

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