"Long Odds"
As with others of his stories (such as "Hunter Quatermain's Story"), this is narrated by a friend at a dinner party in Yorkshire. The facts upon which the story are based occur in Sikukuni’s country, just after old Sequati’s time, in March 1869 (unusually a specific date is given). Quatermain is in the fever country, along the Oliphant River. He comes to a kraal of Knobnoses, which is empty except for a number of dead, and one old woman. She tells him that the kraal has been striken by fever and most have died of it. The survivors have fled, leaving her because of her age and infirmity.
He passes on, until the oxen stray down the Middelburg Road. While waiting for the Kaffirs to find them, Quatermain waits by the wagon. A lion attacks Kaptein, the only oxen which has not run off. Quatermain cannot get into the wagon in time to get his gun, and the lion sniffs at his leg. It calls its family, a lioness and two cubs as big as mastiffs. They start eating Kaptein (and one of the cubs starts licking Quatermain’s leg), until frightened away by the arrival of the boys with the oxen.
Quatermain decides to kill the family of lions. He suspects they are laid up in some nearby reeds, so he sets fire to these. The lions come out. Quatermain misses the lion, as he is temporarily blinded by ash in his eye, but gets one of the cubs. His gun now jams. He manages to clear it, and shoot the second cub, and then the lioness.
He shoots the lion as it leaps at him, but it lands on him, and bites his thigh before dying. He is laid up for a month, and is crippled for six months. He remains lame for the rest of his life. Every March the wound is troublesome, and every three years breaks out raw.
There is nothing much to comment on. This is a simple story, designed to put flesh on the occasionally reminder in other stories that Quartermain is partially lame due to a lion bite.