"Let us go and risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all, it is that they have none."

An extract from "Out of Africa" by Karen Blixen

"One morning during the spring rains, Mr Nichols, a South African who was then my manager came to my house all aflame to tell me that during the night two lions have been to the farm and killed two of our oxen.

I thought that they should be shot.

"And who is going to shoot them?" asked Nichols. "I am no coward but I am a married man and I have no wish to risk my life unnecessarily."

"No" I said. I did not mean to make him shoot the lions. Mr Finch-Hatton had arrived the night before and was in the house. He and I would go.

I then went in to find Denys. "Come now" I said to him. "Let us go and risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all, it is that have got none."

We went down and found the dead bullock in the coffee plantation. It had hardly been touched by the lions. Their spoor was deep and clear in the soft ground. Two big lions had been here in the night.

"What do you think Denys?" I asked him. "Will they come back tonight?"

Denys had great experience with lions and he said they would come back early in the night to finish the meat and we aught to give them time to settle down on it.

In order that we might find our way to the dead oxen in the dark, we cut up strips of paper and fastened them on the rows of coffee trees between which we meant to walk. Marking our way in the manner of Hansel and Gretel with their little white stones it would take us straight to the kill and at the end of it, 20 yards from the carcase we tied a larger piece of paper for here we would stop, sweep the light on and shoot.

At nine o'clock we went out. It rained a little but there was a moon. From time to time she put out her dim white face high up in the sky behind layers and layers of thin clouds and was then dimly mirrored in the white flowered coffee field.

We found our marked two rows of coffee trees. Paused a moment and proceeded up between them. We had mocaissins on and walked silently. I began to shake and tremble with excitement. I dared not come to near to Denys for fear that he might feel it and send me back. But I dared not keep too far away from him either, for he might need my torch light at any moment.

The lions we found afterwards had been on the kill when they heard us, or smelt us. They had walked off it a little way into the coffee field to let us pass. But one of them gave us a very low, hoarse growl in front and to the right of us. It was so low we weren't sure we had even heard it.

Denys stopped a second. Without turning he asked me "Did you hear?"

Yes" I said.

We walked a little again and the deep growling was repeated. This time straight to the right.

"Put on the light" Denys said.

First the circle of light hit a very wide eyed jackal like a small fox. I moved it on and there was the lion. He stood facing us straight. And he looked very light with all the black African night behind him. When the shot fell close to me I was unprepared for it as if it had been thunder. He went down like a stone.

"Move on. Move on" Denys cried to me.

I turned the torch further on but my hand shook so badly that the circle of light danced a dance but in the centre of the dance was the second lion going away from us and half hidden by a coffee tree.

As the light reached him he turned his head and Denys shot. He fell out of the circle but got up into it again and swung towards us and just as the second shot fell he gave one long irrasable groan.

Africa in a second grew endlessly big and Denys and I standing upon it infinitely small. Outside our torchlight there was nothing but darkness. In the darkness in two directions there were lions and from the sky rain.

We went back to the house and opened our bottle. We were too wet and too dirty from mud and blood to sit down to it. But stood up before a faming fire in the dining room and drank our live, singing wine up quickly.

We did not speak one word. In our hunt we had been a unity. And we had nothing to say to one another."