A Tale Of Three Lions (3 page)

“For a long time nothing happened, and I began to think that the best
thing we could do would be to go to sleep again, when suddenly I heard a
sound more like a cough than a roar within about twenty yards of the skerm.
We all looked out, but could see nothing; and then followed another period of
suspense. It was very trying to the nerves, this waiting for an attack that
might be developed from any quarter or might not be developed at all; and
though I was an old hand at this sort of business I was anxious about Harry,
for it is wonderful how the presence of anybody to whom one is attached
unnerves a man in moments of danger. I know, although it was now chilly
enough, I could feel the perspiration running down my nose, and in order to
relieve the strain on my attention employed myself in watching a beetle which
appeared to be attracted by the firelight, and was sitting before it
thoughtfully rubbing his antennæ against each other.

“Suddenly, the beetle gave such a jump that he nearly pitched headlong
into the fire, and so did we all—gave jumps, I mean, and no wonder,
for from right under the skerm fence there came a most frightful roar—
a roar that literally made the Scotch cart shake and took the breath out of
me.

“Harry made an exclamation, Jim-Jim howled outright, while the poor oxen,
who were terrified almost out of their hides, shivered and lowed
piteously.

“The night was almost entirely dark now, for the moon had quite set, and
the clouds had covered up the stars, so that the only light we had came from
the fire, which by this time was burning up brightly again. But, as you know,
firelight is absolutely useless to shoot by, it is so uncertain, and besides,
it penetrates but a very little way into the darkness, although if one is in
the dark outside, one can see it from far away.

“Presently the oxen, after standing still for a moment, suddenly winded
the lion and did what I feared they would do—began to ‘skrek,’ that
is, to try and break loose from the trektow to which they were tied, to rush
off madly into the wilderness. Lions know of this habit on the part of oxen,
which are, I do believe, the most foolish animals under the sun, a sheep
being a very Solomon compared to them; and it is by no means uncommon for a
lion to get in such a position that a herd or span of oxen may wind him,
skrek, break their reims, and rush off into the bush. Of course, once there,
they are helpless in the dark; and then the lion chooses the one that he
loves best and eats him at his leisure.

“Well, round and round went our six poor oxen, nearly trampling us to
death in their mad rush; indeed, had we not hastily tumbled out of the way,
we should have been trodden to death, or at the least seriously injured. As
it was, Harry was run over, and poor Jim-Jim being caught by the trektow
somewhere beneath the arm, was hurled right across the skerm, landing by my
side only some paces off.

“Snap went the disselboom of the cart beneath the transverse strain put
upon it. Had it not broken the cart would have overset; as it was, in another
minute, oxen, cart, trektow, reims, broken disselboom, and everything were
soon tied in one vast heaving, plunging, bellowing, and seemingly
inextricable knot.

“For a moment or two this state of affairs took my attention off from the
lion that had caused it, but whilst I was wondering what on earth was to be
done next, and how we should manage if the cattle broke loose into the bush
and were lost—for cattle frightened in this manner will so straight
away like mad things—my thoughts were suddenly recalled to the lion
in a very painful fashion.

“For at that moment I perceived by the light of the fire a kind of gleam
of yellow travelling through the air towards us.

“‘The lion! the lion!’ holloaed Pharaoh, and as he did so, he, or rather
she, for it was a great gaunt lioness, half wild no doubt with hunger, lit
right in the middle of the skerm, and stood there in the smoky gloom lashing
her tail and roaring. I seized my rifle and fired it at her, but what between
the confusion, my agitation, and the uncertain light, I missed her, and
nearly shot Pharaoh. The flash of the rifle, however, threw the whole scene
into strong relief, and a wild sight it was I can tell you—with the
seething mass of oxen twisted all round the cart, in such a fashion that
their heads looked as though they were growing out of their rumps; and their
horns seemed to protrude from their backs; the smoking fire with just a blaze
in the heart of the smoke; Jim-Jim in the foreground, where the oxen had
thrown him in their wild rush, stretched out there in terror, and then as a
centre to the picture the great gaunt lioness glaring round with hungry
yellow eyes, roaring and whining as she made up her mind what to do.

“It did not take her long, however, just the time that it takes a flash to
die into darkness, for, before I could fire again or do anything, with a most
fiendish snort she sprang upon poor Jim-Jim.

“I heard the unfortunate lad shriek, and then almost instantly I saw his
legs thrown into the air. The lioness had seized him by the neck, and with a
sudden jerk thrown his body over her back so that his legs hung down upon the
further side.*

[* I have known a lion carry a two-year-old ox over a
stone wall four feet high in this fashion, and a mile away into the bush
beyond. He was subsequently poisoned by strychnine put into the carcass of
the ox, and I still have his claws.—Editor. ]

Then, without the slightest hesitation, and apparently without any
difficulty, she cleared the skerm face at a single bound, and bearing poor
Jim- Jim with her vanished into the darkness beyond, in the direction of the
bathing- place that I have already described. We jumped up perfectly mad with
horror and fear, and rushed wildly after her, firing shots at haphazard on
the chance that she would be frightened by them into dropping her prey, but
nothing could we see, and nothing could we hear. The lioness had vanished
into the darkness, taking Jim-Jim with her, and to attempt to follow her till
daylight was madness. We should only expose ourselves to the risk of a like
fate.

“So with scared and heavy hearts we crept back to the skerm, and sat down
to wait for the dawn, which now could not be much more than an hour off. It
was absolutely useless to try even to disentangle the oxen till then, so all
that was left for us to do was to sit and wonder how it came to pass that the
one should be taken and the other left, and to hope against hope that our
poor servant might have been mercifully delivered from the lion’s jaws.

“At length the faint dawn came stealing like a ghost up the long slope of
bush, and glinted on the tangled oxen’s horns, and with white and frightened
faces we got up and set to the task of disentangling the oxen, till such time
as there should be light enough to enable us to follow the trail of the
lioness which had gone off with Jim-Jim. And here a fresh trouble awaited us,
for when at last with infinite difficulty we had disentangled the great
helpless brutes, it was only to find that one of the best of them was very
sick. There was no mistake about the way he stood with his legs slightly
apart and his head hanging down. He had got the redwater, I was sure of it.
Of all the difficulties connected with life and travelling in South Africa
those connected with oxen are perhaps the worst. The ox is the most
exasperating animal in the world, a negro excepted. He has absolutely no
constitution, and never neglects an opportunity of falling sick of some
mysterious disease. He will get thin upon the slightest provocation, and from
mere maliciousness die of ‘poverty’; whereas it is his chief delight to turn
round and refuse to pull whenever he finds himself well in the centre of a
river, or the waggon-wheel nicely fast in a mud hole. Drive him a few miles
over rough roads and you will find that he is footsore; turn him loose to
feed and you will discover that he has run away, or if he has not run away he
has of malice aforethought eaten ‘tulip’ and poisoned himself. There is
always something with him. The ox is a brute. It was of a piece with his
accustomed behaviour for the one in question to break out—on purpose
probably—with redwater just when a lion had walked off with his herd.
It was exactly what I should have expected, and I was therefore neither
disappointed nor surprised.

“Well, it was no use crying as I should almost have liked to do, because
if this ox had redwater it was probable that the rest of them had it too,
although they had been sold to me as ‘salted,’ that is, proof against such
diseases as redwater and lungsick. One gets hardened to this sort of thing in
South Africa in course of time, for I suppose in no other country in the
world is the waste of animal life so great.

“So taking my rifle and telling Harry to follow me (for we had to leave
Pharaoh to look after the oxen—Pharaoh’s lean kine, I called them), I
started to see if anything could be found of or appertaining to the
unfortunate Jim-Jim. The ground round our little camp was hard and rocky, and
we could not hit off any spoor of the lioness, though just outside the skerm
was a drop or two of blood. About three hundred yards from the camp, and a
little to the right, was a patch of sugar bush mixed up with the usual
mimosa, and for this I made, thinking that the lioness would have been sure
to take her prey there to devour it. On we pushed through the long grass that
was bent down beneath the weight of the soaking dew. In two minutes we were
wet through up to the thighs, as wet as though we had waded through water. In
due course, however, we reached the patch of bush, and by the grey light of
the morning cautiously and slowly pushed our way into it. It was very dark
under the trees, for the sun was not yet up, so we walked with the most
extreme care, half expecting every minute to come across the lioness licking
the bones of poor Jim-Jim. But no lioness could we see, and as for Jim-Jim
there was not even a finger-joint of him to be found. Evidently they had not
come here.

“So pushing through the bush we proceeded to hunt every other likely spot,
but with the same result.

“‘I suppose she must have taken him right away,’ I said at last, sadly
enough. ‘At any rate he will be dead by now, so God have mercy on him, we
can’t help him. What’s to be done now?’

“‘I suppose that we had better wash ourselves in the pool, and then go
back and get something to eat. I am filthy,’ said Harry.

“This was a practical if a somewhat unfeeling suggestion. At least it
struck me as unfeeling to talk of washing when poor Jim-Jim had been so
recently eaten. However, I did not let my sentiment carry me away, so we went
down to the beautiful spot that I have described, to wash. I was the first to
reach it, which I did by scrambling down the ferny bank. Then I turned round,
and started back with a yell—as well I might, for almost from beneath
my feet there came a most awful snarl.

“I had lit nearly upon the back of the lioness, that had been sleeping on
the slab where we always stood to dry ourselves after bathing. With a snarl
and a growl, before I could do anything, before I could even cock my rifle,
she had bounded right across the crystal pool, and vanished over the opposite
bank. It was all done in an instant, as quick as thought.

“She had been sleeping on the slab, and oh, horror! what was that sleeping
beside her? It was the red remains of poor Jim-Jim, lying on a patch of
blood-stained rock.

“‘Oh! father, father!’ shrieked Harry, ‘look in the water!’

“I looked. There, floating in the centre of the lovely tranquil pool, was
Jim-Jim’s head. The lioness had bitten it right off, and it had rolled down
the sloping rock into the water.

“We never bathed in that pool again; indeed for my part I could never look
at its peaceful purity fringed round with waving ferns without thinking of
that ghastly head which rolled itself off through the water when we tried to
catch it.

“Poor Jim-Jim! We buried what was left of him, which was not very much, in
an old bread-bag, and though whilst he lived his virtues were not great, now
that he was gone we could have wept over him. Indeed, Harry did weep
outright; while Pharaoh used very bad language in Zulu, and I registered a
quiet little vow on my account that I would let daylight into that lioness
before I was forty-eight hours older, if by any means it could be done.

“Well, we buried him, and there he lies in the bread-bag (which I rather
grudged him, as it was the only one we had), where lions will not trouble him
any more—though perhaps the hyænas will, if they consider that
there is enough on him left to make it worth their while to dig him up.
However, he won’t mind that; so there is an end of the book of Jim-Jim.

“The question that now remained was, how to circumvent his murderess. I
knew that she would be sure to return as soon as she was hungry again, but I
did not know when she would be hungry. She had left so little of Jim-Jim
behind her that I should scarcely expect to see her the next night, unless
indeed she had cubs. Still, I felt that it would not be wise to miss the
chance of her coming, so we set about making preparations for her reception.
The first thing that we did was to strengthen the bush wall of the skerm by
dragging a large quantity of the tops of thorn-trees together, and laying
them one on the other in such a fashion that the thorns pointed outwards.
This, after our experience of the fate of Jim-Jim, seemed a very necessary
precaution, since if where one goat can jump another can follow, as the
Kaffirs say, how much more is this the case when an animal so active and so
vigorous as the lion is concerned! And now came the further question, how
were we to beguile the lioness to return? Lions are animals that have a
strange knack of appearing when they are not wanted, and keeping studiously
out of the way when their presence is required. Of course it was possible
that if she had found Jim-Jim to her liking she would come back to see if
there were any more of his kind about, but still it was not to be relied
on.