In
this breathing space which they vouchsafed us, it
occurred to me that should they renew their attacks,
a trap would perhaps offer the best chance of getting
at them, and that if I could construct one in which
a couple of coolies might be used as bait without
being subjected to any danger, the lions would be
quite daring enough to enter it in search of them
and thus be caught.I accordingly set to work at
once, and in a short time managed to make a
sufficiently strong trap out of wooden sleepers,
tram-rails, pieces of telegraph wire, and a length of
heavy chain. It was divided into two compartments one for the men and one for the lion. A
sliding door at one end admitted the former, and
once inside this compartment they were perfectly
safe, as between them and the lion, if he entered
the other, ran a cross wall of iron rails only three
inches apart, and embedded both top and bottom in heavy wooden sleepers. The door which was to
admit the lion was, of course, at the opposite end of
the structure, but otherwise the whole thing was very
much on the principle of the ordinary rat-trap,
except that it was not necessary for the lion to seize
the bait in order to send the door clattering down.
This part of the contrivance was arranged in the following manner. A heavy chain was secured
along the top part of the lion's doorway, the ends
hanging down to the ground on either side of the
opening;
and to these were fastened, strongly
secured by stout wire, short lengths of rails placed
about six inches apart. This made a sort of flexible
door which could be packed into a small space when
not in use, and which abutted against the top of the
doorway when lifted up. The door was held in this
position by a lever made of a piece of rail, which in
turn was kept in its place by a wire fastened to one
end and passing down to a spring concealed in the
ground inside the cage. As soon as the lion entered
sufficiently far into the trap, he would be bound to
tread on the spring;
his weight on this would
release the wire, and in an instant down would come
the door behind him
;
and he could not push it out
in any way, as it fell into a groove between two
rails firmly embedded in the ground.

Chapter 6