M'Robert's twelve pounds had enabled him to employ. Little did the
good woman think that this offering would indirectly be the means of
preserving the life of Livingstone for the wonderful work of the next
thirty years! When, on being attacked by Mebalwe, the lion left
Livingstone, and sprang upon him, he bit his thigh, then dashed toward
another man, and caught him by the shoulder, when in a moment, the
previous shots taking effect, he fell down dead. Sir Bartle Frere, in
his obituary notice of Livingstone read to the Royal Geographical
Society, remarked: "For thirty years afterward all his labors and
adventures, entailing such exertion and fatigue, were undertaken with a
limb so maimed that it was painful for him to raise a fowling-piece, or
in fact to place the left arm in any position above the level of the
shoulder."
[Footnote 21: He did not speak of it spontaneously, and sometimes he
gave unexpected answers to questions put to him about it. To one person
who asked very earnestly what were his thoughts when the lion was above
him, he answered, "I was thinking what part of me he would eat first"--a
grotesque thought, which some persons considered strange in so good a
man, but which was quite in accordance with human experience in similar
circumstances.
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