Our horses, which were frightened,
wheeled round and fled, for the animal was evidently about to attack
us. As it was, he did make one bound in our direction; we could not
pull up until we had gone half a mile; and when we did, we saw the lion
had torn down the horse which Romer had ridden, and was dragging away
the carcass to the right at a sort of a canter, without any apparent
effort on his part. We waited till he was well off, and then rode back
to the spot where Romer had fallen: we soon found him, but he was quite
dead; the blow with the lion's paw had fractured his skull.
"I ought to have said that the Gorraguas told us not to travel by
night, but by day; and we had done so in consequence of their advice. I
believe it was very good advice, notwithstanding this unfortunate
accident, for we found that when we had travelled all night the lions
had more than once followed us the whole time; and indeed I have often
thought since that we were altogether indebted to his mercy who
ordereth all things, both in heaven and earth, that we escaped so well
as we did. Three days after poor Romer's death we first saw the wide
ocean again. We kept near the coast, but we soon found that we could
not obtain the supply of game, or fuel for our fires at night, so well
as we could in the interior, and we agreed to get away from the coast
again.
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