After he had brought me my dinner, I took up my station at the foot of a wild olive-tree about three paces distant from the bull.

I cut off a few branches in order to cover myself from behind, and I waited. I waited for a long time.

At about eight o'clock, the dim rays of the new moon which was sinking below the horizon no longer lit up the corner in which I lay secreted but very feebly.

Leaning against the trunk of the tree, and only able to distinguish such objects as were close to me, I contented myself with listening.

A branch cracked at a distance ; I got up and assumed a commodious offensive position; my elbow lay upon my left knee, my rifle stuck to my shoulder, my finger was on the trigger, I listened a moment but without hearing anything more.

At last a stifled roar broke forth within thirty paces of me, and then came nearer; it was succeeded by a kind of low guttural sound, which, with the lion, is a sign of hunger.

Immediately afterwards the animal made no more noise, and I could not make out where he was till I saw his monstrous head leaning over the shoulders of the bull.

He was beginning to lick it, having his eyes fixed on me all the time, when an ingot of iron struck him an inch from his left eye.

He roared, rose up upon his hind legs, and received another ingot, which tumbled him over on the spot. Struck by this second shot in the very centre of his chest, he was stretched on his back by the blow, and worked his enormous paws in the air.

After having reloaded, I went up to the lion, and thinking that he was almost dead, I struck with my dagger at his heart; but by an involuntary move. ment he warded off the blow, and the blade broke upon his fore-arm.

I jumped back, and as he was lifting up his enormous head, I administered to him two more ingots, which finished him off.

And thus perished the "lord with the great head."

It is absurd to try and shoot lions when it is perfectly dark—a little moonlight is absolutely necessary. Our lion-killer, accustomed as he was to be out in the darkest nights, acknowledges that such a proceeding is very foolish, and that it nearly cost him his life-indeed, he was not a little glad to escape safe and whole from the first rencounter that he had on a dark night :

It was in the month of February, 1845. I had had the honour of receiving a few months previously a capital rifle from H.R.H. the Duke of Aumale.

I had then only killed two lions, and felt very anxious to kill a third with this weapon, since made illustrious by thirteen victories, but which is even now less dear to me because it has been my companion and my safety for three hundred nights, than because it was given to me by the prince.

A fever which I had caught during my first excursions had prevented me entering upon a new campaign. Hoping that the sea air would benefit me, I went to Bône at the end of February.

But having received intelligence that a great old lion was committing ravages in the neighbourhood of the camp of Drayan, I sent to Ghelma for my arms, and left Bone the 26th of February.

The 27th, at five o'clock in the evening, I arrived at the duar of the U❜lut Bu Azizi, not above a mile and a half from the haunt of my beast, which, according to the old men of the tribe, had taken up his abode in the Jibal Krunaga for the last thirty years.

I learnt, on arriving, that every evening, at sunset, the lion roared on leaving his den, and that at night he came down into the plain still roaring.

It appeared impossible that I should not meet him, so I loaded both my guns as hastily as I could, nor indeed scarcely had I concluded the operation, to

which the greatest attention must always be paid, than I heard the lion roaring in the mountain.

My host offered to accompany me to the ford which the lion would pass on leaving the mountain; so I gave him my other gun to carry, and we started. It was so dark that we could not see two paces before us. After having walked about a quarter of an hour through cover, we arrived on the banks of a rivulet which flowed from the Jibal Krun-aga.

My guide, exceedingly disturbed by the roaring which kept coming nearer and nearer, said: "The ford is there."

I endeavoured to examine the position, but everything around me was enveloped in utter darkness; I could not even see my Arab, who touched me.

Not being able to distinguish anything with my eyes, I began to descend to the rivulet, in order to discover by feeling with the hand if there were any remains of animals. It was a narrow pent-up ford, the approaches to which were difficult and abrupt.

Having selected a stone which would serve as a seat, right over the waters of the rivulet and a little above the ford, I dismissed my guide, much to his satisfaction.

Whilst I had been reconnoitring the locality he kept saying: "Let us go back to the duar; the night is too dark; we will seek the lion to-morrow by daylight."

Not daring to return to the duar alone, he hid himself in a mass of lentiscs about fifty paces away from the ford. After having ordered him not to move, come what might, I took up my position on the stone.

The lion had never ceased roaring, and was coming gradually nearer and

nearer.

Having closed my eyes for a few minutes, I succeeded, on opening them, in making out a vertical bank at my feet, cut out no doubt when the waters were swollen, for the rivulet now flowed at a depth of some feet below: the ford was to my left, a little more than a gun's length: I arranged my plan accordingly.

If I could make out the lion in the rivulet I would fire at him there, the bank being in my favour, if I was lucky enough to wound him seriously.

It was about nine o'clock, when a loud roar burst forth a hundred yards from the rivulet. I cocked my gun and my elbow on my knee, the butt on my shoulder, my eyes fixed on the water, which I caught sight of at times: I waited.

Time began to appear long, when, from the opposite bank of the rivulet, and immediately in front of me, there came a deep sigh, with a guttural sound like the rattling in the throat of a man in the agony of death.

I raised my eyes in the direction of this ominous sound, and I perceived the eyes of the lion fixed upon me like two burning coals. The fixidity of the look, which cast a wan light that lit up nothing around, not even the head to which it was attached, caused all the blood that was in my veins to regurgitate to my heart.

Only one minute ago I was shivering with cold, now the perspiration rolled down my forehead.

Whoever has not seen an adult lion in a wild state, living or dead, may believe in the possibility of a struggle, body to body, with a lion. He who has seen one knows that a man struggling with a lion is a mouse in the claws of a cat.

I have said that I had already killed two lions; the smallest weighed five hundred pounds. He had, with one stroke of his enormous paw, brought a horse at full speed to a stand-still. Horse and rider had remained upon the spot.

From that time I was sufficiently aware of their resources to know what I had to do. I no longer, for example, looked to my dagger as a means of safety.

But what I said to myself, and I repeat it now,-in a case where one or two balls did not succeed in killing a lion (a great possibility), when he should bound upon me, if I could resist the shock, I would make him swallow my gun up to the stock; and then, if his powerful claws have neither torn nor. harpooned me, I would work away with my dagger at his eyes or heart, according as I should be placed with regard to the animal and the amount of freedom of action which I still possessed.

If I fell with the shock of the bound (which is more than probable), so long as I had both hands free, my left should search the region of the heart, and my right should strike the blow.

If next morning two bodies are found mutually embracing one another, mine, at all events, will not have left the field of battle, and that of the lion' will not be far off,-the dagger will have told the rest.

I had just drawn my dagger from its scabbard, and stuck it in the earth, within reach of my hand, when the lion's eyes began to lower towards the rivulet.

I bade good-by to those I loved best, and having promised them to die well, when my finger sought for the trigger I was less agitated than the lion that was taking to the water.

I heard his first step in the rivulet, which flowed past rapidly and noisily, and then nothing more. Had he stopped? Was he walking towards me? That is what I asked myself as I sought to penetrate with my eyes the dark veil that wrapt everything around me, when I thought I heard close to me, to the left, the sound of his footfall in the mud.

He was indeed out of the rivulet, and was quietly ascending the slope towards the ford, when the movement I made induced him to stop short. He was only four or five paces from me, and could reach me with a single bound.

It is useless to seek the sight of a rifle when one cannot see the barrel. I fired as I best could, my head up and my eyes open, and, by the momentary flash, I made out an enormous mass, hairy, but without form. A terrific roar followed; the lion was mortally wounded.

To the first burst of grief succeeded dull threatening moans. I heard the animal struggling in the mud on the banks of the rivulet, and then he grew quiet.

Thinking he was dead, or at all events incapable of getting out of the hole he was in, I returned to the duar with my guide, who having heard all that had passed, was persuaded that the lion was ours.

I need not say that I did not sleep that night. At the first break of day we arrived at the ford; no lion was to be seen. We found, in the midst of a pool of blood, of which the animal had lost a large quantity, a bone as big as a finger, which led me to suppose he had a shoulder broken.

A great root had been cut in two by the lion's jaws from the side of the embankment, about two feet from where I stood. The agony that he must have felt by the tumble experienced from this mishap was the cause, no doubt, of the moans I had heard, and had prevented him renewing his attack. It was in vain that we followed the traces of his blood; he had kept along the bed of the rivulet, and they were soon lost.

The next day the Arabs of the country, who had many losses to lay to the account of the lion, and who were persuaded that he was mortally wounded, came and offered to help in the search.

There were sixty of us-some on foot, others on horseback; after some hours of ineffectual search, I returned to the duar, and was preparing to take my departure, when I heard several shots fired, followed by loud hurrahs in the direction of the mountain.

I started off as fast as my steed would carry me, and was soon satisfied that my hopes would not be disappointed this time. The Arabs were flying in every direction, and crying out like madmen.

Some had placed the rivulet between them and the lion; others bolder, be

cause they were on horseback, having seen him drag himself with difficulty towards the mountain, which he endeavoured to climb up, had got together, to the number of ten, "to finish him off," as they said. The shaikh led them on.

I had just passed the rivulet, and was going to get down off my horse, when I saw the horsemen, the shaikh at the head of them, turn round and make off as fast as ever they could tear.

The lion, with only three legs, bounded over the rocks and lentiscs* with greater agility than they did, roaring all the time so lustily as to terrify the horses to that degree that their riders had no longer any control over them.

The horses continued to gallop, but the lion had stopped in a glade, looking after the runaways with a proud, threatening aspect. And truly magnificent he was, with his open mouth, casting looks of defiance and death upon all around. How stern he looked with his black mane bristling up, and his tail striking his sides with passion.

From the place where I stood to where he was there might be about three hundred paces. I got down and called to one of the Arabs to take my horse. Several ran up, and I was obliged, not to be put back on my horse, or dragged away, to leave the burnus by which they held me in their hands. Some endeavoured to follow me, to dissuade me; but as I quickened my pace to get near the lion, their number kept diminishing.

One only remained: it was my guide of the first night; he said to me: “I received you in my tent; I am answerable for you before God and before men; I will die with you."

The lion had left the glade to bury himself in a deep covert a few paces distant. Walking with great precaution, always ready to fire, I endeavoured in vain to make out his seat amid rocks and shrubbery. I had just been poking my gun into a particularly dense mass of foliage, when my guide, who had remained without, said:

"Death won't have you; you passed the lion so close as to touch it; if your eyes had met his you were a dead man before you could have fired.”

For all answer, I told him to throw stones into the cover; at the very first that fell a lentisc opened, and the lion, having looked first to the right and then to the left, sprung at me.

He was ten paces off, his tail up, and his mane hanging down to his eyes, whilst his outstretched neck and broken leg, that trailed behind with the claws turned upside down, gave him somewhat the appearance of a dog setting at game.

As soon as he appeared I sat down, pushing the Arab behind me, as he kept annoying me by exclamations of "Fire! fire!-fire then !" which he mixed with his prayers.

I had scarcely shouldered my rifle, when the lion got a little spring of four or five paces nearer, and he was about to try another, when, struck an inch above the eye, he tumbled over.

My Arab was already returning thanks to God, when the lion turned himself over, got up upon his seat, and then rose upon his hind legs like a horse rearing.

Another ball was sent this time right home to its heart, and he fell over, dead.

Upon examining this lion after death, M. Jules Gerard found that the second ball had flattened itself on the frontal bone without fracturing it in the slightest degree. It was in consequence of this that he adopted from that time forward ingots of iron instead of leaden balls.

The tree so often alluded to is the Pistachia lentiscus, lentisc, or sticky pistachia; one species of which, P. terebinthus, produces turpentine-this the gum mastick.

July-VOL. CI. NO. CCCCII.

T

A SOLDIER'S CAREER.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE UNHOLY WISH."

I.

I Do not know whether the following sketch will prove of much interest to the general reader, since it refers to time and events that are past: to that war of ours with the Sikhs in India, now happily over. To those, however, who had relatives in that war, and lost them, it will be welcome, for the incidents related in it are authentic, though they savour strongly of romance.

In the year 1833, a handsome young lad of seventeen, whom it will not do to call here by his real name, went out to India as a cadet. It is his career—and it was but a short one-that I wish to tell you of. He was a high-spirited, noble boy, but wild, thoughtless, and everlastingly in scrapes; and had caused his guardians no end of trouble and expense. But they could not help admiring the lad with all his faults; and his mother, though she would call him her unlucky boy, called him likewise her darling Harry. Harry was his Christian name: there's no necessity to change that and for the rest let us say Harry Lynn. He was the younger of two sons; his father was a substantial country squire; and a profitable living, in the gift of the family, was destined for him. So, by way of preparation, the child, at nine years old, was sent to Dr. Bringemon's fast academy in London, where he picked up notions quite at variance with those of his sober father and mother. At twelve years old, he had fallen in love with a soldier's coat, and told his sisters privately, that they should never make a parson of him. At fourteen, ere the mourning he wore for his father was soiled, he wrote word home that he would be a captain in India. He was sent for to the Hall. His mother cried, his guardians talked of a birch-rod, but Master Harry held to his own will. He lavished love upon his mother, but he laughingly defied his guardians; and the upshot of the business was, that Henry Lynn was posted as a gentleman-cadet, and at seventeen set sail for India.

It would seem that he liked the life he found there, for, some five or six years afterwards, when, by the death of his brother, he succeeded to the family estate, and it was supposed he would sell out and go home to enjoy it, he made no change at all; save paying off his debts, and launching forth into fresh expense, which he had been quite ready to do before. Few men were so universally liked as Harry Lynn. Impetuous, open-hearted, generous, and handsome as he had been in boyhood, so he remained in manhood.

Now do you know much about that race of men called the Sikhs? Few do; save that they are people inhabiting certain tracts of land in India. Nobody had ever heard of them till about two hundred years ago, when they came to light as natives of Hindostan; a peaceful, submissive race of men, inoffensive as are our Quakers. Their religion was a mixture of Mahometanism and Hindooism, neither entirely one nor the other, which brought down upon them persecutions from the bigots of