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Updated: May 9, 2025
About twenty paces from the little skerm was a large ant-heap, and on the summit of the ant-heap, her four feet rather close together, so as to find standing space, stood the massive form of a big lioness. Her head was towards the skerm, and in the bright moonlight I saw her lower it and lick her paws. "Mashune thrust the Martini rifle into my hands, whispering that it was loaded.
"Meanwhile Mashune employed himself in dragging together some dead boughs from the mimosa trees to make a sort of 'skerm, or shelter for us to sleep in, about forty yards from the edge of the pool of water.
No Roman lady, with her baths of porphyry or alabaster, could have had a more delicious spot to bathe herself than we found within fifty yards of our skerm, or rough inclosure of mimosa thorn, that we had dragged together round the cart to protect us from the attacks of lions. That there were several of these brutes about, I knew from their spoor, though we had neither heard nor seen them.
The first thing that we did was to strengthen the bush wall of the skerm by dragging a large quantity of the tops of thorn-trees together, and laying them one on the other in such a fashion that the thorns pointed outwards.
We should only expose ourselves to the risk of a like fate. He was subsequently poisoned by strychnine put into the carcass of the ox, and I still have his claws. "So with scared and heavy hearts we crept back to the skerm, and sat down to wait for the dawn, which now could not be much more than an hour off.
At any rate they came, and quickly too, for within five minutes, peeping through the bushes of our skerm fence, we saw a magnificent lion bounding along towards us, through the tall tambouki grass, that in the moonlight looked for all the world like ripening corn. On he came in great leaps, and a glorious sight it was to see him.
I remember that sitting in the skerm I could with ease read faint pencil notes in my pocket-book. As soon as the moon was up game began to trek down to the water just below us. I could, from where I sat, see all sorts of them passing along a little ridge that ran to our right, on their way to the drinking place.
Zulus do not like green food. "Just after Mashune had finished his watercress, we heard the loud 'woof! woof! of a lion, who was evidently promenading much nearer to our little skerm than was pleasant. Indeed, on looking into the darkness and listening intently, I could hear his snoring breath, and catch the light of his great yellow eyes.
"Suddenly, the beetle gave such a jump that he nearly pitched headlong into the fire, and so did we all gave jumps, I mean, and no wonder, for from right under the skerm fence there came a most frightful roar a roar that literally made the Scotch cart shake and took the breath out of me.
Another night, when we were encamped in the very heart of a rumoured "lion country," ourselves and our beasts securely protected by an unusually high and thick "skerm," we were, to our regret, left undisturbed; but the aforementioned Scotch cart, which rumbled away from the sleeping camp about midnight, had a series of adventures with Leo felis.
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