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A Tale of Three Lions
CHAPTER I
THE INTEREST ON TEN SHILLINGS
Most of you will have heard that Allan Quatermain, who was one
of the party that discovered King Solomon's mines some little time ago,
and who afterwards came to live in England near his friend Sir Henry
Curtis. He went back to the wilderness again, as these old hunters
almost invariably do, on one pretext or another.[*] They cannot endure
civilization for very long, its noise and racket and the omnipresence of
broad-clothed humanity proving more trying to their nerves than the
dangers of the desert. I think that they feel lonely here, for it is a
fact that is too little understood, though it has often been stated,
that there is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially to
those who are unaccustomed to them. "What is there in the world," old
Quatermain would say, "so desolate as to stand in the streets of a great
city and listen to the footsteps falling, falling, multitudinous as the
rain, and watch the white line of faces as they hurry past, you know
not whence, you know not whither? They come and go, their eyes meet
yours with a cold stare, for a moment their features are written on your
mind, and then they are gone for ever. You will never see them again;
they will never see you again; they come up out of the unknown, and
presently they once more vanish into the unknown, taking their secrets
with them. Yes, that is loneliness pure and undefiled; but to one who
knows and loves it, the wilderness is not lonely, because the spirit of
nature is ever there to keep the wanderer company. He finds companions
in the winds--the sunny streams babble like Nature's children at his
feet; high above them, in the purple sunset, are domes and minarets and
palaces, such as no mortal man has built, in and out of whose flaming
doors the angels of the sun seem to move continually. And there, too, is
the wild game, following its feeding-grounds in great armies, with the
springbuck thrown out before for skirmishers; then rank upon rank of
long-faced blesbuck, marching and wheeling like infantry; and last the
shining troops of quagga, and the fierce-eyed shaggy vilderbeeste to
take, as it were, the place of the cossack host that hangs upon an
army's flanks.
[*] This of course was written before Mr. Quatermain's account
of the adventures in the newly-discovered country of Zu-Vendis of
himself, Sir Henry Curtis, and Capt. John Good had been received in
England.--Editor.
"Oh, no," he would say, "the wilderness is not lonely, for, my
boy, remember that the further you get from man, the nearer you grow to
God," and though this is a saying that might well be disputed, it is one
I am sure that anybody will easily understand who has watched the sun
rise and set on the limitless deserted plains, and seen the thunder
chariots of the clouds roll in majesty across the depths of unfathomable
sky.
Well, at any rate we went back again, and now for many months I
have heard nothing at all of him, and to be frank, I greatly doubt if
anybody will ever hear of him again. I fear that the wilderness, that
has for so many years been a mother to him, will now also prove his
grave and the grave of those who accompanied him, for the quest upon
which he and they have started is a wild one indeed.
But while he was in England for those three years or so between
his return from the successful discovery of the wise king's buried
treasures, and the death of his only son, I saw a great deal of old
Allan Quatermain. I had known him years before in Africa, and after he
came home, whenever I had nothing better to do, I used to run up to
Yorkshire and stay with him, and in this way I at one time and another
heard many of the incidents of his past life, and most curious some of
them were. No man can pass all those years following the rough existence
of an elephant-hunter without meeting with many strange adventures, and
in one way and another old Quatermain has certainly seen his share.
Well, the story that I am going to tell you in the following pages is
one of the later of these adventures, though I forget the exact year in
which it happened. at any rate I know that it was the only trip upon
which he took his son Harry (who is since dead) with him, and that Harry
was then about fourteen. And now for the story, which I will repeat, as
nearly as I can, in the words in which Hunter Quatermain told it to me
one night in the old oak-panelled vestibule of his house in Yorkshire.
We were talking about gold- mining--
"Gold-mining!" he broke in; "ah! yes, I once went gold-mining
at Pilgrims' Rest in the Transvaal, and it was after that that we had
the business about Jim-Jim and the lions. Do you know Pilgrim's Rest?
Well, it is, or was, one of the queerest little places you ever saw. The
town itself was pitched in a stony valley, with mountains all about it,
and in the middle of such scenery as one does not often get the chance
of seeing. Many and many is the time that I have thrown down my pick and
shovel in disgust, clambered out of my claim, and walked a couple of
miles or so to the top of some hill. Then I would lie down in the grass
and look out over the glorious stretch of country--the smiling valleys,
the great mountains touched with gold-- real gold of the sunset, and
clothed in sweeping robes of bush, and stare into the depths of the
perfect sky above; yes, and thank Heaven I had got away from the cursing
and the coarse jokes of the miners, and the voices of those Basutu
Kaffirs as they toiled in the sun, the memory of which is with me yet.
"Well, for some months I dug away patiently at my claim, till
the very sight of a pick or of a washing-trough became hateful to me. A
hundred times a day I lamented my own folly in having invested eight
hundred pounds, which was about all that I was worth at the time, in
this gold-mining. But like other better people before me, I had been
bitten by the gold bug, and now was forced to take the consequences. I
bought a claim out of which a man had made a fortune--five or six
thousand pounds at least--as I thought, very cheap; that is, I gave him
five hundred pounds down for it. It was all that I had made by a very
rough year's elephant-hunting beyond the Zambesi, and I sighed deeply
and prophetically when I saw my successful friend, who was a Yankee,
sweep up the roll of Standard Bank notes with the lordly air of the man
who has made his fortune, and cram them into his breeches pockets.
'Well,' I said to him--the happy vendor--'it is a magnificent property,
and I only hope that my luck will be as good as yours has been.'
"He smiled; to my excited nerves it seemed that he smiled
ominously, as he answered me in a peculiar Yankee drawl: 'I guess,
stranger, as I ain't the one to make a man quarrel with his food, more
especial when there ain't no more going of the rounds; and as for that
there claim, well, she's been a good nigger to me; but between you and
me, stranger, speaking man to man, now that there ain't any filthy lucre
between us to obscure the features of the truth, I guess she's about
worked out!'
"I gasped; the fellow's effrontery took the breath out of me.
Only five minutes before he had been swearing by all his gods--and they
appeared to be numerous and mixed--that there were half a dozen fortunes
left in the claim, and that he was only giving it up because he was
downright weary of shovelling the gold out.
"'Don't look so vexed, stranger,' went on my tormentor,
'perhaps there is some shine in the old girl yet; anyway you are a
downright good fellow, you are, therefore you will, I guess, have a real
A1 opportunity of working on the feelings of Fortune. Anyway it will
bring the muscle up upon your arm, for the stuff is uncommon stiff, and,
what is more, you will in the course of a year earn a sight more than
two thousand dollars in value of experience.'
"Then he went just in time, for in another moment I should have gone for him, and I saw his face no more.
"Well, I set to work on the old claim with my boy Harry and
half a dozen Kaffirs to help me, which, seeing that I had put nearly all
my worldly wealth into it, was the least that I could do. And we
worked, my word, we did work--early and late we went at it--but never a
bit of gold did we see; no, not even a nugget large enough to make a
scarf- pin out of. The American gentleman had secured it all and left us
the sweepings.
"For three months this went on, till at last I had paid away
all, or very near all, that was left of her little capital in wages and
food for the Kaffirs and ourselves. When I tell you that Boer meal was
sometimes as high as four pounds a bag, you will understand that it did
not take long to run through our banking account.
"At last the crisis came. One Saturday night I had paid the men
as usual, and bought a muid of mealie meal at sixty shillings for them
to fill themselves with, and then I went with my boy Harry and sat on
the edge of the great hole that we had dug in the hill-side, and which
we had in bitter mockery named Eldorado. There we sat in the moonlight
with our feet over the edge of the claim, and were melancholy enough for
anything. Presently I pulled out my purse and emptied its contents into
my hand. There was a half-sovereign, two florins, ninepence in silver,
no coppers--for copper practically does not circulate in South Africa,
which is one of the things that make living so dear there--in all
exactly fourteen and ninepence.
"'There, Harry, my boy!' I said, 'that is the sum total of our worldly wealth; that hole has swallowed all the rest.'
"'By George!' said Master Harry; 'I say, father, you and I
shall have to let ourselves out to work with the Kaffirs and live on
mealie pap,' and he sniggered at his unpleasant little joke.
"But I was in no mood for joking, for it is not a merry thing
to dig like anything for months and be completely ruined in the process,
especially if you happen to dislike digging, and consequently I
resented Harry's light-heartedness.
"'Be quiet, boy!' I said, raising my hand as though to give him
a cuff, with the result that the half-sovereign slipped out of it and
fell into the gulf below.
"'Oh, bother,' said I, 'it's gone.'
"'There, Dad,' said Harry, 'that's what comes of letting your angry passions rise; now we are down to four and nine.'
"I made no answer to these words of wisdom, but scrambled down
the steep sides of the claim, followed by Harry, to hunt for my little
all. Well, we hunted and we hunted, but the moonlight is an uncertain
thing to look for half-sovereigns by, and there was some loose soil
about, for the Kaffirs had knocked off working at this very spot a
couple of hours before. I took a pick and raked away the clods of earth
with it, in the hope of finding the coin; but all in vain. At last in
sheer annoyance I struck the sharp end of the pickaxe down into the
soil, which was of a very hard nature. To my astonishment it sunk in
right up to the haft.
"'Why, Harry,' I said, 'this ground must have been disturbed!'
"'I don't think so, father,' he answered; 'but we will soon
see,' and he began to shovel out the soil with his hands. 'Oh,' he said
presently, 'it's only some old stones; the pick has gone down between
them, look!' and he began to pull at one of the stones.
"'I say, Dad,' he said presently, almost in a whisper, 'it's
precious heavy, feel it;' and he rose and gave me a round, brownish lump
about the size of a very large apple, which he was holding in both his
hands. I took it curiously and held it up to the light. It /was/ very
heavy. The moonlight fell upon its rough and filth-encrusted surface,
and as I looked, curious little thrills of excitement began to pass
through me. But I could not be sure.
"'Give me your knife, Harry,' I said.
"He did so, and resting the brown stone on my knee I scratched at its surface. Great heavens, it was soft!
"Another second and the secret was out, we had found a great
nugget of pure gold, four pounds of it or more. 'It's gold, lad,' I
said, 'it's gold, or I'm a Dutchman!'
"Harry, with his eyes starting out of his head, glared down at
the gleaming yellow scratch that I had made upon the virgin metal, and
then burst out into yell upon yell of exultation, which went ringing
away across the silent claims like shrieks of somebody being murdered.
"'Be quiet!' I said; 'do you want every thief on the fields after you?'
"Scarcely were the words out of my mouth when I heard a
stealthy footstep approaching. I promptly put the big nugget down and
sat on it, and uncommonly hard it was. As I did so I saw a lean dark
face poked over the edge of the claim and a pair of beady eyes searching
us out. I knew the face, it belonged to a man of very bad character
known as Handspike Tom, who had, I understood, been so named at the
Diamond Fields because he had murdered his mate with a handspike. He was
now no doubt prowling about like a human hyжna to see what he could
steal.
"'Is that you, 'unter Quatermain?' he said.
"'Yes, it's I, Mr. Tom,' I answered, politely.
"'And what might all that there yelling be?' he asked. 'I was
walking along, a-taking of the evening air and a-thinking on the stars,
when I 'ears 'owl after 'owl.'
"'Well, Mr. Tom,' I answered, 'that is not to be wondered at, seeing that like yourself they are nocturnal birds.'
"''Owl after 'owl!' he repeated sternly, taking no notice of my
interpretation, 'and I stops and says, "That's murder," and I listens
again and thinks, "No, it ain't; that 'owl is the 'owl of hexultation;
some one's been and got his fingers into a gummy yeller pot, I'll swear,
and gone off 'is 'ead in the sucking of them." Now, 'unter Quatermain,
is I right? is it nuggets? Oh, lor!' and he smacked his lips
audibly--'great big yellow boys--is it them that you have just been and
tumbled across?'
"'No,' I said boldly, 'it isn't'--the cruel gleam in his black
eyes altogether overcoming my aversion to untruth, for I knew that if
once he found out what it was that I was sitting on--and by the way I
have heard of rolling in gold being spoken of as a pleasant process, but
I certainly do not recommend anybody who values comfort to try sitting
on it--I should run a very good chance of being 'handspiked' before the
night was over.
"'If you want to know what it was, Mr. Tom,' I went on, with my
politest air, although in agony from the nugget underneath--for I hold
it is always best to be polite to a man who is so ready with a
handspike--'my boy and I have had a slight difference of opinion, and I
was enforcing my view of the matter upon him; that's all.'
"'Yes, Mr. Tom,' put in Harry, beginning to weep, for Harry was
a smart boy, and saw the difficulty we were in, 'that was it--I halloed
because father beat me.'
"'Well, now, did yer, my dear boy--did yer? Well, all I can say
is that a played-out old claim is a wonderful queer sort of place to
come to for to argify at ten o'clock of night, and what's more, my sweet
youth, if ever I should 'ave the argifying of yer'--and he leered
unpleasantly at Harry--'yer won't 'oller in quite such a jolly sort 'o
way. And now I'll be saying good-night, for I don't like disturbing of a
family party. No, I ain't that sort of man, I ain't. Good-night to yer,
'unter Quatermain--good-night to yer, my argified young one;' and Mr.
Tom turned away disappointed, and prowled off elsewhere, like a human
jackal, to see what he could thieve or kill.
"'Thank goodness!' I said, as I slipped off the lump of gold.
'Now, then, do you get up, Harry, and see if that consummate villain has
gone.' Harry did so, and reported that he had vanished towards
Pilgrim's Rest, and then we set to work, and very carefully, but
trembling with excitement, with our hands hollowed out all the space of
ground into which I had struck the pick. Yes, as I hoped, there was a
regular nest of nuggets, twelve in all, running from the size of a
hazel-nut to that of a hen's egg, though of course the first one was
much larger than that. How they all came there nobody can say; it was
one of those extraordinary freaks, with stories of which, at any rate,
all people acquainted with alluvial gold-mining will be familiar. It
turned out afterwards that the American who sold me the claim had in the
same way made his pile--a much larger one than ours, by the way-- out
of a single pocket, and then worked for six months without seeing
colour, after which he gave it up.
"At any rate, there the nuggets were, to the value, as it
turned out afterwards, of about twelve hundred and fifty pounds, so that
after all I took out of that hole four hundred and fifty pounds more
than I put into it. We got them all out and wrapped them up in a
handkerchief, and then, fearing to carry home so much treasure,
especially as we knew that Mr. Handspike Tom was on the prowl, made up
our minds to pass the night where we were--a necessity which,
disagreeable as it was, was wonderfully sweetened by the presence of
that handkerchief full of virgin gold--the interest of my lost half-
sovereign.
"Slowly the night wore away, for with the fear of Handspike Tom
before my eyes I did not dare to go to sleep, and at last the dawn
came. I got up and watched its growth, till it opened like a flower upon
the eastern sky, and the sunbeams began to spring up in splendour from
mountain-top to mountain-top. I watched it, and as I did so it flashed
upon me, with a complete conviction which I had not felt before, that I
had had enough of gold-mining to last me the rest of my natural life,
and I then and there made up my mind to clear out of Pilgrims' Rest and
go and shoot buffalo towards Delagoa Bay. Then I turned, took the pick
and shovel, and although it was a Sunday morning, woke up Harry and set
to work to see if there were any more nuggets about. As I expected,
there were none. What we had got had lain together in a little pocket
filled with soil that felt quite different from the stiff stuff round
and outside the pocket. There was not another trace of gold. Of course
it is possible that there were more pocketfuls somewhere about, but all I
have to say is I made up my mind that, whoever found them, I should
not; and, as a matter of fact, I have since heard that this claim has
been the ruin of two or three people, as it very nearly was the ruin of
me.
"'Harry,' I said presently, 'I am going away this week towards
Delagoa to shoot buffalo. Shall I take you with me, or send you down to
Durban?'
"'Oh, take me with you, father!' begged Harry, 'I want to kill a buffalo!'
"'And supposing that the buffalo kills you instead?' I asked.
"'Oh, never mind,' he said, gaily, 'there are lots more where I came from.'
"I rebuked him for his flippancy, but in the end I consented to take him.
CHAPTER II
WHAT WAS FOUND IN THE POOL
"Something over a fortnight had passed since the night when I
lost half-a-sovereign and found twelve hundred and fifty pounds in
looking for it, and instead of that horrid hole, for which, after all,
Eldorado was hardly a misnomer, a very different scene stretched away
before us clad in the silver robe of the moonlight. We were camped--
Harry and I, two Kaffirs, a Scotch cart, and six oxen--on the swelling
side of a great wave of bushclad land. Just where we had made our camp,
however, the bush was very sparse, and only grew about in clumps, while
here and there were single flat-topped mimosa-trees. To our right a
little stream, which had cut a deep channel for itself in the bosom of
the slope, flowed musically on between banks green with maidenhair, wild
asparagus, and many beautiful grasses. The bed-rock here was red
granite, and in the course of centuries of patient washing the water had
hollowed out some of the huge slabs in its path into great troughs and
cups, and these we used for bathing-places. No Roman lady, with her
baths of porphyry or alabaster, could have had a more delicious spot to
bathe herself than we found within fifty yards of our skerm, or rough
inclosure of mimosa thorn, that we had dragged together round the cart
to protect us from the attacks of lions. That there were several of
these brutes about, I knew from their spoor, though we had neither heard
nor seen them.
"Our bath was a little nook where the eddy of the stream had
washed away a mass of soil, and on the edge of it there grew a most
beautiful old mimosa thorn. Beneath the thorn was a large smooth slab of
granite fringed all round with maidenhair and other ferns, that sloped
gently down to a pool of the clearest sparkling water, which lay in a
bowl of granite about ten feet wide by five feet deep in the centre.
Here to this slab we went every morning to bathe, and that delightful
bath is among the most pleasant of my hunting reminiscences, as it is
also, for reasons which will presently appear, among the most painful.
"It was a lovely night. Harry and I sat to the windward of the
fire, where the two Kaffirs were busily employed in cooking some impala
steaks off a buck which Harry, to his great joy, had shot that morning,
and were as perfectly contented with ourselves and the world at large as
two people could possibly be. The night was beautiful, and it would
require somebody with more words on the tip of his tongue than I have to
describe properly the chastened majesty of those moonlit wilds. Away
for ever and for ever, away to the mysterious north, rolled the great
bush ocean over which the silence brooded. There beneath us a mile or
more to the right ran the wide Oliphant, and mirror-like flashed back
the moon, whose silver spears were shivered on its breast, and then
tossed in twisted lines of light far and wide about the mountains and
the plain. Down upon the river-banks grew great timber-trees that
through the stillness pointed solemnly to Heaven, and the beauty of the
night lay upon them like a cloud. Everywhere was silence--silence in the
starred depths, silence on the bosom of the sleeping earth. Now, if
ever, great thoughts might rise in a man's mind, and for a space he
might forget his littleness in the sense that he partook of the pure
immensity about him.
"'Hark! what was that?'
"From far away down by the river there comes a mighty rolling sound, then another, and another. It is the lion seeking his meat.
"I saw Harry shiver and turn a little pale. He was a plucky boy
enough, but the roar of a lion heard for the first time in the solemn
bush veldt at night is apt to shake the nerves of any lad.
"'Lions, my boy,' I said; 'they are hunting down by the river
there; but I don't think that you need make yourself uneasy. We have
been here three nights now, and if they were going to pay us a visit I
think that they would have done so before this. However, we will make up
the fire.'
"'Here, Pharaoh, do you and Jim-Jim get some more wood before
we go to sleep, else the cats will be purring round you before morning.'
"Pharaoh, a great brawny Swazi, who had been working for me at
Pilgrims' Rest, laughed, rose, and stretched himself, then calling to
Jim-Jim to bring the axe and a reim, started off in the moonlight
towards a clump of sugar-bush where we cut our fuel from some dead
trees. He was a fine fellow in his way, was Pharaoh, and I think that he
had been named Pharaoh because he had an Egyptian cast of countenance
and a royal sort of swagger about him. But his way was a somewhat
peculiar way, on account of the uncertainty of his temper, and very few
people could get on with him; also if he could find liquor he would
drink like a fish, and when he drank he became shockingly bloodthirsty.
These were his bad points; his good ones were that, like most people of
the Zulu blood, he became exceedingly attached if he took to you at all;
he was a hard-working and intelligent man, and about as dare-devil and
plucky a fellow at a pinch as I have ever had to do with. He was about
five-and-thirty years of age or so, but not a 'keshla' or ringed man. I
believe that he had got into trouble in some way in Swaziland, and the
authorities of his tribe would not allow him to assume the ring, and
that is why he came to work at the gold-fields. The other man, or rather
lad, Jim- Jim, was a Mapoch Kaffir, or Knobnose, and even in the light
of subsequent events I fear I cannot speak very well of him. He was an
idle and careless young rascal, and only that very morning I had to tell
Pharaoh to give him a beating for letting the oxen stray, which Pharaoh
did with the greatest gusto, although he was by way of being very fond
of Jim-Jim. Indeed, I saw him consoling Jim-Jim afterwards with a pinch
of snuff from his own ear-box, whilst he explained to him that the next
time it came in the way of duty to flog him, he meant to thrash him with
the other hand, so as to cross the old cuts and make a "pretty pattern"
on his back.
"Well, off they went, though Jim-Jim did not at all like
leaving the camp at that hour, even when the moonlight was so bright,
and in due course returned safely enough with a great bundle of wood. I
laughed at Jim-Jim, and asked him if he had seen anything, and he said
yes, he had; he had seen two large yellow eyes staring at him from
behind a bush, and heard something snore.
"As, however, on further investigation the yellow eyes and the
snore appeared to have existed only in Jim-Jim's lively imagination, I
was not greatly disturbed by this alarming report; but having seen to
the making-up of the fire, got into the skerm and went quietly to sleep
with Harry by my side.
"Some hours afterwards I woke up with a start. I don't know
what woke me. The moon had gone down, or at least was almost hidden
behind the soft horizon of bush, only her red rim being visible. Also a
wind had sprung up and was driving long hurrying lines of cloud across
the starry sky, and altogether a great change had come over the mood of
the night. By the look of the sky I judged that we must be about two
hours from day-break.
"The oxen, which were as usual tied to the disselboom of the
Scotch cart, were very restless--they kept snuffling and blowing, and
rising up and lying down again, so I at once suspected that they must
wind something. Presently I knew what it was that they winded, for
within fifty yards of us a lion roared, not very loud, but quite loud
enough to make my heart come into my mouth.
"Pharaoh was sleeping on the other side of the cart, and, looking beneath it, I saw him raise his head and listen.
"'Lion, Inkoos,' he whispered, 'lion!'
"Jim-Jim also jumped up, and by the faint light I could see that he was in a very great fright indeed.
"Thinking that it was as well to be prepared for emergencies, I
told Pharaoh to throw wood upon the fire, and woke up Harry, who I
verily believe was capable of sleeping happily through the crack of
doom. He was a little scared at first, but presently the excitement of
the position came home to him, and he grew quite anxious to see his
majesty face to face. I got my rifle handy and gave Harry his--a Westley
Richards falling block, which is a very useful gun for a youth, being
light and yet a good killing rifle, and then we waited.
"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 antennж 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.[*] 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.
[*] 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.
"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. Далее
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