"Easy Does It"
Oil 16x20
Price on request

The early morning sun has hardly warmed the savannah when the hunting party of five and their gun bearers left camp to gallop lions. This sport (also called riding lions) was popular and considered to have no equal in the early 1900s of British and German East Africa (now Kenya and Tanzania).

Some lions had been seen the night before by one of the hunters, so they were heading to where they had been sighted. Upon arriving at the site, they saw vultures circling overhead and assumed the lions must be on a kill. The two female members of the party, Lady Waterford and Mrs. Ward, were asked to ride to high ground so they may watch the hunt from a safe distance. Their husbands, along with Blayney Percival, rode on in earnest towards the presumed location of the kill. To their surprise there were some thirteen lions. On seeing the hunters, the lions scattered, each hunter galloping after his chosen quarry; gunshots rang out from all directions. Blayney caught sight of three lions heading for the cover of a small riverbed and took off after them. Finally, after a hard ride, he could see two of them in the marsh, but had lost sight of the third; he dismounted and walked towards some higher ground and a termite mound. He was not six paces from his horse when the missing lioness suddenly sprang up from low cover and showed itself and all its anger. Blayney, who never rode with a rifle (his gun bearer would ride separately or travel on foot with the rifle) only had a colt .45 revolver. He was on his own, the gun bearer was elsewhere. The two foes froze for a moment, eyes locked. Blayney, with his inadequate revolver in hand, began to walk backwards, ever-so-slowly, his left hand raised as if to somehow prevent the inevitable charge. Blayney called to his horse without looking round, not wanting to take his eyes off the lioness. He reached behind and felt the welcome head of his mount. Still half watching the lioness, he turned and vaulted into the saddle, giving the horse the spur as he took off hell-for-leather. The lioness remained motionless as the hunter rode off leaving a cloud of dust. Blayney’s fear had now turned into anger - at himself, not the lioness, for getting into such a situation.