Its backbone was shattered by a .475 bullet.
Thus ended my first and only adventure in the "tree method." The boma method is slightly more dangerous and much more exciting.

A lot of thorn branches are twisted together in a little circle, within which the hunter sits and waits for his lion.

As in the tree method, a bait is placed near the boma, twelve or fifteen yards away, and a little loophole is arranged in the tangle of thorn branches through which the rifle may be trained upon the bait.
[Drawing: _The Boma Method_] The lion can not get into the boma unless he jumps up and comes in from the top.

It is the function of the hunter to prevent this strategic manoeuver by killing the lion before he gets in.

If he does not, he is likely to find himself engaged in a spirited hand-to-hand fight with an unfriendly lion in a space about as big as the upper berth of a sleeping-car.
My first boma was a meshwork of thorns piled and interwoven together with the architectural simplicity of an Eskimo igloo.