The day shall not be up so soon as I,
To try the fair adventure of the morn
King John
We are blessed in this man, as I may say, even blessed
Winter’s Tale
The sun shall not be up so soon as I. Indeed, I had a whole half-hour’s start of him, while I put my house in order. I prepared in my own way for the fair adventure of the morn, and told Cecily where to look for my will. She was in wild spirits, and chaffed me no end. She saw to her armoury, and asked me over and over to eat more. But I said I felt exactly like a man about to be hanged, of whom you read in the next day’s papers: “The prisoner made a most excellent breakfast.”
Out we started, Clarence, the Somali who joined our forces at the spot where the camels tried a course of mud baths, four hunters, and two syces. We followed the old spoor for miles, but it was at last apparent that the pachyderm we were after had by this time travelled far out of our ken. We sat down to cogitate, and the hunters went off spooring on a detour of their own.
In the thick jungle we disturbed a few baby ostriches. I could not count how many, because they scattered right and left, thrown into panic by the shameless desertion of the little brood by their father, who making a direct bid for his own safety, took a beeline out of our radius. I cornered one little fluffy yellow and black bird, and could have caught him had I wished. He was about twelve inches high, very important looking, and his bright black boot-button eyes gazed at me unblinkingly. Stout little yellow legs supported the tubby quaint body, and then I let him pass to gain solitude and his brothers. We did not war with ostrich babies. I had rather a contempt for that cock bird. Imagine leaving his children like that! And yet, considered in the abstract, an ostrich of all other denizens of the wild world stands for respectability and staunchness of purpose. He pairs for life. None of your gad-about ideas for him. One life, one love, is the ostrich motto, and if he finds the “Ever and ever, Amen” variety of domesticity spells satiety almost invariably, well, he is no different from other two-footed creatures we know. Nature is the same wherever or however we find it.
The ostrich does not look a happy bird. His sad pathetic face makes one think something in this “sorry scheme of things entire” does not altogether satisfy. What the ostrich really needs is a matrimonial system whereby these birds might take each other on the lease principle, as we do houses, with the option of renewal. Things would brighten up for them, I am sure, considerably. I don’t know how we can arrange it, or even put the suggestion to them. Perhaps some intensely knowing person could arrange this, the editor of the halfpenny patron of patriotism, for instance. He understands everything. The suggested lease system would add considerable zest to life in the ostrich world, as indeed it would in many others. Just before the lease fell in Madame Ostrich would assure her husband that the very last idea she had would be its renewal. For all masculinity wants is that, and that only, which is denied him. Mr. Ostrich would feel that the renewal of the lease was the be-all of everything, and the fattest slugs, the best bit of ground for finding tit-bits upon, and the least prickly walks in the jungle would all be offered as persuasive arguments. The general pleasantness would last them both for weeks.
A hunter reported he had come on a maze of rhino tracks. Allowing for the usual exaggeration, we judged one rhinoceros might be get-at-able. On investigation, we found that one had passed through the thickish country, and that very recently. Joy!—for Cecily! Hastily we left our ponies in charge of the syces, detailed two other hunters to remain also, and with the remaining followers prepared to stalk. Often the spoor was lost for a hundred yards or so, but our very able shikaris never failed to pick it up again, and though the going was exceedingly heavy, we made fair progress. We saw numerous oryx and dibitag, one of the latter passing so near me that I exchanged glances with her at twenty-five yards. But, of course, “the likes of them” were safe from us now.
We sped across an open bit, and then into another belt of jungle. The whole aspect of the spot looked to me as the very place to see a repetition of the Baron disaster. We plunged into the ubiquitous thorn, starting a frightened dik-dik as I took my header. Crawling, pushing, scratching, we won our way to comparatively clear ground. Clarence raised his hand for utter silence. We heard a scrunching and breaking of thorns. A great beast was a-travelling. Maybe he had winded us or been disturbed. And then “a strange thing happened.” I, who had been absolutely impassive up to now, was drawn into the mesh of desire. The effects of rhino shooting on me is like unto the results of champagne drinking on Brillat-Savarin, at first (ab initio) most exciting, afterward (in rccessu) stupefying. I was now thoroughly game for anything. But kept my reason in sufficient bounds to remember that thick thorn cover is not an ideal place to meet a rhino in.
We did a most careful stalk, creeping towards the place of the sounds, under Clarence’s complete directions. At last, he alone pressed on with us, the others willingly remaining where he signalled. We were not now in overwhelmingly thick thorn, but it was too dense to be pleasant, and necessitated our handling our rifles with the greatest care. After a hard few minutes we sank down to rest. Our rifles covered a small clearing.
The game of all sizes had made tunnels through the jungly place, high enough in some parts for us to stand upright, and all seemed to lead to this open glade. Flies in myriads were buzzing about the undergrowth, a reddish squirrel, with bushy tail, jerked towards me on a fallen guda tree, then with a chatter made off among the branches. The air was simply stifling with dry heat, and I was thirsty beyond words.
Wonder of wonders! A dark ponderous bulk loomed on the left of us, under a great guda tree, overhung with armo creeper. The great head came well into view, all unconscious of intruders. The beast was lunching, eating his favourite bushes, and munching steadily. This was not at all sporting—it seemed so simple.
Cecily gently pushed the muzzle of her 12-bore through the sheltering thorns, and was able to take careful and steady aim at the rhino’s ear. She was in excellent range. It is no use trying for a rhino at a distance exceeding eighty, or at the most, ninety yards. Bang! The smoke hung for a moment, obscuring everything. The animal seemed to stagger to the shot. And then, on the instant, with snorts and squeals, small out of all proportion to the size of the emitter, charged across the intervening space. Then when he made the jungle he as quickly dashed back again. I was very anxious for Cecily to have this shoot all to herself, and though I had a glorious chance of a heart shot from my position, I held my fire.
I am not very clear what happened next, and when I apply to my cousin she says, “I’m sure I cannot tell you.” I think Cecily came dangerously forward. The rhino turned on our inadequate fortress of mimosa, and as the peril swept upon us we seemed to gather wit and sense to combat the danger. Separating widely as the beast plunged straight in where we had been, we turned on him, simultaneously, to fire. Then we branched off again, at right angles. I fell into a thorn bush, and took the opportunity of comparative safety to reload. Cecily was now dancing about in the open, in a most sporting but in no sense a common-sense fashion. For a dreadful instant I feared the result. The rhino bull took up a large circle with its careering and struggles, and the dust was so great that from my post I could not clearly see the finish. I heard the rifle crack twice again, and then a ringing shout for me came. There lay the mighty carcase in a kneeling attitude. A mountain of flesh indeed!
Cecily had a great gash on her wrist, caused, I fancy, by some sharp flint stone, and the blood was running down her rifle as she held it at the trail. She was too excited to speak, and there was no calming her down. She really seemed like a person in a dream. I announced to her solemnly it was to be our last rhino shoot. The tension relaxed then, and she laughed at my serious face.
A series of whistles brought up the hunters, and the last phase began. Cecily and I set off to find our ponies, and, full of elation, made for camp and tea. We had tea at all hours of the day, finding it the most refreshing of anything, and I don’t really think it affected our nerves one scrap.
It was rather late when our men reached camp, laden with treasure. They brought the rhino’s feet, his tail, his head, and some of his skin. There was no reason why they should not have brought it all. It comes off quite easily. They said they had not time, as they feared being bushed, or that lions would be attracted to the spot by the smell of blood. The skin is very valuable to the Somalis for shields, and many other purposes, and we rather thought it was a put up business to secure half the rhino hide for themselves. We thought of going back then and there and seeing the thing finished, but Clarence said it was such a long way off, the result would be we would all assuredly be caught out in the bush at night. I suppose he was right. They had us fairly.
The Somalis don’t care for eating rhino, and I cannot say the flesh looks very inviting, but we got the chef to make us some soup of the tail, which you hear so well spoken of by all travellers. I do not think our opinion can be considered a fair one. It would have been a better soup had we made it ourselves. Our cook could not cook anything properly, and the tail and taste of it, if there had been either in the pan at any time, was drowned in a waste of water.
Before the great pachyderm began to be dismembered we measured him, and his waist, or where his waist should be if he had one, was by the tape, seven feet three inches. I don’t know what a fashionable belle rhinoceros would think of that. In length he was a shade over ten feet, but this was not a very large animal as they go. We set to work helping to stretch and clean and saltpetre. The anterior horn was much blunted at the tip, the result of some accident or wear and tear of some kind, so that it lost half an inch or so in length. But eleven inches looks formidable enough, on such a fearsome head. The eyes are ridiculously small in a rhino. I think to such altogether inadequate optics much of the bad sight put down to the rhino must be ascribed. One would hardly think every single animal of this variety starts its career with bad sight, but that is what every hunter tells you. Go nap every time on the non-seeing powers of your enemy if he happens to be a rhinoceros if you like, but see there is a tree to get behind before you begin. This is advice from myself.
Next day was a poor one as far as sport was concerned. We were very stiff with so much crawling, though at the time we had not noticed it. We sent off a few men to retrieve the rest of the hide from the remains of the rhino, and when the camp was quiet we investigated the trophies, and overhauled them carefully. Some of them cried aloud in their agony for attention. The skin of the last killed lion was beginning to lose some hair in parts. And this was because, when we undid it and looked behind, great lumps of flesh still adhered, making it impossible for the preservatives to do any curing. It took us a long time to set this right, and we rubbed alum in as hard as we could on the inside. Of course, if the skinning is not carefully done, the chances are the trophy will have to be thrown away. I don’t know how we should have taken a catastrophe of such magnitude.
The men returned to say the skin of the rhino was not to be found. I don’t suppose they had even been to the spot. I am confident they had, in some mysterious way, managed to let their friends know a wealth of shields were to be had for the taking. There was nothing left of our huge friend of the day before, so the men said. Wild beasts had eaten him.
Later, I heard a great shouting in camp and calls for us, and answering in person, I saw Clarence seated on a pony, proudly displaying and offering to me a baby oryx, which he had in front of him. We lifted the mite down, holding it, all struggling, firmly. It was terror-stricken, poor wee thing. I tried to stroke its satin coat, but it only started and looked at me with frightened piteous beseeching eyes. Clarence meant well, but oh, I would a thousand times he had left the kid with its mother. And then a thought struck me. How had he come by this fleet thing? May be killed the doe and then ridden the baby down. Instantly I put it to him. I know I frowned. But he disarmed me by saying the matter was not as I thought, and the mother was alive, unharmed; that he had ridden them down until the little oryx, spent, had to drop, and the mother fled away in fear before his threatening gestures.
I consulted with Cecily, and we came to the conclusion that if we wanted to please Clarence there was nothing for it but to keep the buck, but after mixing it some condensed milk, which we gave it in a bottle with a bit of rubber tubing on the neck, we realised that to retain our little guest meant our going without milk in our tea for weeks. Camel milk was not available, and the baby could not eat. I was thankful of a reasonable excuse to offer Clarence, and he saw the sense of it. I longed to restore the tiny creature to its mother, and Clarence said if we took it back to the place from whence it came the doe would assuredly find it.
We decided to try this, but to secrete ourselves, and cover the baby buck with our protecting rifles. Otherwise, it was quite on the cards that a lion or leopard would make off with it ere its mother could retrieve it. In any case, I should imagine a violent death awaited it. It was so very youthful and easily stalked. I took the timorous creature across my saddle, it seemed all struggling legs and arms, and with Clarence for guide made for the place, some two miles off, where he first started the oryx. I confess I still had my doubts as to his tale and its veracity, but in this I wronged our shikari.
We set the baby down alone, so fragile and small it looked, and then hid ourselves in a great thorn brake. We were as far off as we dared go, and the buck did not wander far. Sometimes it bleated in a little treble, once or twice it lay down, tucking its long legs beneath it, to rise again and wander, all lonely, among the low thorn bushes. Two hours or more we waited and then—a gentle whinny, and almost before we realised it, a perfect oryx doe cantered towards the fawn. She nosed it all over and her joy expressed itself in every imaginable way. It was a most beautiful and pathetic sight. We made some movement, and all alert again, the graceful creature sailed away, the baby trotting beside. My eyes were full of tears, and I had a lump in my throat. ’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful. To think that in all the jungle a mother could find her way to the lost best beloved with nothing to guide her, nothing to tell her. Clarence took it all most naturally, and said all female things are like that. I do almost believe him!
The sun sailed high in a sky of molten brass, the hot sand blistered the palm set down on it, not a breath of air was stirring. And I, foolish wight, was stalking, on hands and knees, a hartebeest. A family of ants had crawled up my sleeve. I went too near their palace, I suppose, and they mistook the way. A yellow snake, small, wicked-looking, and alert, lay right in my path. Not for a hundred hartebeest would I disturb him! I made a great detour, to the wonderment of Clarence, who trailed along in my wake. When he saw he wondered no longer. He has learned now, and thinks snakes are a sort of mania of mine, and that I must be humoured. Great bluebottle flies jumped up in our faces from the red-hot sand, then—buzz—and down again. Oh, for some shade—some air—some water! There was my hartebeest again, with well-groomed coat and flicking tail. The flies were a worry to him too. Now he gets beyond a bunch of aoul—his sentinels. I shall never get within range. I lay my rifle down, myself with it. I can’t see the hartebeest, the aoul, the flies—there is nothing anywhere but a golden maze of light, and a world of noisy hammers in my ears.
’Twas nothing, just a mild touch of the sun, and next day Richard was himself again, and out with the second hunter, like a French falconer, prepared to fly at anything. Only we chose towards evening for our hunting.
Our ponies carried us through most of the dense country, but sometimes we had to get off and seek an easier way round. We saw tracks of all varieties of game, but for an hour or more had the jungle apparently to ourselves. We were leading our steeds, when we crossed a great find, a place where a lion had been lying, may be after some great banquet. The thorns had taken his size and shape like a mould, and his hairs were all about to betray his whilom presence. The hunter spoored about and picked up the lion trail some little way off. The ground being so loose and sandy made no good evidence of time. The pugs might have been made now, or that morning. We went on silently and after not more than five minutes going, with an electric-like shock, I realised that a lion stood over a kill to our immediate front. He winded us, and stretching his great neck and head upwards to sniff in magnificent disregard bounded into the thicket, the tuft on his tail being the last glimpse I caught of him. I was too taken aback to even try to get my rifle up. It all happened so very swiftly. We were a very small party to tackle a lion in thick cover, but my man was a little Trojan and did not hesitate when I said I would proceed and he must take a hand at the game. He was carrying my 12-bore, and I had my .500 Express.
First we tethered the ponies, thinking they would be quite safe as we should be in the near vicinity, then we commenced to beat after a fashion of our own. Walking as straight ahead as we could, pushing and struggling through where we couldn’t. We fired into the dusky depths in desperation at last, but nothing happened. It was not until we had covered a few hundred yards more before we saw, in a lightening of the undergrowth, a sinuous yellow form streaking along. The hunter in his excitement brought up his rifle. I held his arm. The danger was too great. If a wounded lion turned on us here we were done for, hemmed in as we were. We saw no more of him, he had put some distance between us, and “on my life, had stol’n him home to bed.”
It was a great disappointment, but, after all, there isn’t much sport in courting disaster. The chances should be almost even, a little in favour of the animal, not entirely so.
The ponies had untethered themselves, it doesn’t say much for the way we secured them, I’m afraid, and had betaken their way campwards. We had to track their hoof marks that we might also cut a long journey short. Night was closing in, and we wanted the shelter of our zareba. And supper, oh, supper! most of all!
We had no special time for meals in camp. A system that would properly disgust a good housewife. The cook had to produce food whenever we required some, at any time, early or late. It did not make for good cooking; but then, neither did the chef.
Do not give dalliance too much the rein
The Tempest
When out early one morning a green oasis tempted me to leave the sandy waste and ramble in among the depths of the aloes, creep in and out of the festoons of armo, and hunt for anything that might be astir. Choosing the part where the bushes seemed most willing to admit us, we crept in—a hunter and I—he of the Cook’s Guide turn of mind. Parting the creepers as we went, we found it easier than we had thought to penetrate the density.
On almost every branch a chameleon lay basking, dead to all appearances save for the eternal wakefulness of their eyes. In a glade where the grass grew high there was a whirr and a rush. Some small animal was startled. But we saw nothing. The hunter prepared to account for it, but I would have none of it, and silenced him with a look. I was there to read the book of the wild for myself, not to have it read aloud.
A tree snake dropped from his low perch on a thorn bush, and wriggled away in the thicket. Two distinct lines of brown marked him, and that was all I saw. He gave me “creeps,” and I turned away in an opposite direction. Sometimes a bit of thorn would hold me lovingly, and all my blandishments could not make it let me go. I only obtained freedom with leaving a piece of my coat as tribute. Vulturine guinea-fowl ran at the sight of us, raising their naked necks and setting off at great speed to make safety. They are beautiful birds, and the prismatic colours of the feathers show up against the green of the armo very distinctly. Doves cooed above us, but I could not catch a glimpse of one. As we neared the middle of the oasis we came on a few scattered half-eaten bones—a dead lesser koodoo. He had furnished a meal for a lion, doubtless, and later for one of his own people. One or two varieties of antelope are very fond of nibbling dry white bones.
We took a turn to the right, and on the instant a beautiful lesser koodoo took a gigantic leap over an in-the-way bunch of aloe scrub. He disappeared into a thicket and I stood motionless listening. So I suspect did my koodoo. All was still, but only for a moment. The amateur Cook’s Guide got entangled somehow or other with a trailing creeper, and to my complete horror and amazement let off my .500 Express which he was carrying. He must have been holding it in very unskilled fashion. The bullet missed my head by a couple of inches. I felt the whiz of it and heard it ricochet into the trees. I was so unnerved I sat down and thought things out. My hunter was quite oblivious to any shock I might have received, because the stock of the rifle had hit him hard somewhere—I was too vexed to inquire the exact location—and he bewailed his misfortune. I ordered him to go home to camp and leave me, which he did with alacrity. After about half an hour my trembling fit passed. It was very cowardly to be so upset, but I hate unknown and quite unforeseen dangers, and an unsuspected bullet at close quarters demoralises me.
I sat on quietly, and the bush began to stir and take up its daily round again, forgetting the demon crash that had disturbed its slumbers. A little red velveteen spider ran speedily up an armo leaf, tumbled over the edge and suspended himself on a golden wire. Jerk! jerk! Lower he went, then up again. Two bars of his house completed, when alas, a great fly of the species that haunted our trophies, flew right across and smashed the spider-house to nothing. The velveteen spider sat on a leaf—fortunately he had made safety ere the Juggernaut passed along—and meditated, but only for a moment. He was a philosopher and knew all about the “Try, try, try again” axiom. Over he hurled himself on another golden thread and laid another criss-cross foundation-stone. And there I left him because I wanted to penetrate farther.
How could I manoeuvre a big antelope now if I shot one, seeing that my hunter had left me? Was it not counting my chickens? Yes, but that is what one does all the time in big game shooting!
In one bit of glade I worked my way through the caterpillars had played devastator; every leaf was eaten. I hurried on. I rested again on a fallen guda tree, hunting first to see no snake shared my seat with me. I kept utterly silent for an hour or more, when my patience was rewarded. Through the bushes I saw a white chin bobbing up and down as it chose out the most succulent thorns. Lower it went. I hardly breathed. To see a lesser koodoo in his haunts one sometimes has to wait for months. Here was I, in the limits of a morning’s patrol, so lucky. The great broad ear flickered in and out. Because this antelope mostly lives in thick cover where quick hearing is his only safety, his ear has grown in accordance with necessities. Somali hunters never seem to differentiate between the koodoo and the lesser koodoo. They are both one and the same to them, and are called “Godir” indiscriminately. And yet the two animals are so different it seems absurd to think of confusion.
The koodoo (strepsiceros koodoo) is the biggest antelope in Somaliland, heavy, magnificent and warlike. It inhabits mountainous parts, and the reason would seem to be plain. Space for such great horns is required, and though on occasion they frequent jungly parts of the Golis, their nature and habit is to live in the stony gorges, and stalking one is not unlike stalking one of our own Scotch deer. The lesser koodoo (strepsiceros imberbis) is the personification of all the graces. What the koodoo gains in majesty the lesser has in exquisite symmetry of line and contour. The lesser koodoo never grows much larger than a small donkey, the horns are replicas in little of the average three footer of the koodoo, and there is no beard, but a short mane. Like the koodoo, the lesser is striped down each side like the white ribs of a skeleton.
My friend still fed, rustling the bushes as he chose out his favourite herbage. I had seen nothing to fire at, but, in any case, I did not mean to try for him, as in my lone condition it would mean a return to camp for assistance, and meanwhile the beautiful antelope would be food for any prowling beast. I hated at all times to kill wastefully. The head of the lesser koodoo looked, as far as I could see, a fair one, the light of the sun glinting through the shadowy depths occasionally caught the curving horns. But since he might not be mine, since I could not get him back to camp, I would not kill wantonly.
In speaking of the wholesale slaughter of Somaliland fauna by sportsmen and sportsmen so-called, one ought really to include the Somalis themselves. They have assisted materially to decimate the country—of elephants particularly. On lions they have not made much impression, as these animals are too big a job to tackle unless they are driven to it. But in the days when the elephant roamed the land, their slaughter for the sake of the ivory was wholesale, terrific and amazing. Clarence, who was of the Gadabursi country, well remembers his father and his tribe hunting the elephant on a colossal scale, killing several a week. The manner of it was courageous, to say the least. The tribe went out, mounted on swift ponies, and the marked-down elephant being selected from the herd, he was ridden down in the open. One agile Somali would caper in front of the pachyderm to attract his attention, and a rider at the gallop would pass in swift flying rush behind and cut the ham-string or tendon of one of the hind legs. The elephant would then be at the mercy of the hunters. It must have been a dangerously exciting business. The sword used—I saw one in the hut of a Mullah at the Upper Sheik—is of native make, apparently, strong, and longer in the blade than the bilâwa, which is often seen in its scabbard of white leather bound round the waist of a Somali. It was not unlike the familiar sword known to us as the “Dervish”—two-edged, with a groove down the centre, and light. The handle was of horn, and bound about with leather. And yet we think ourselves brave to venture in the vicinity of my lord the elephant with the latest thing in rifles in our hands!
What with the ham-stringing, and all hunters killing cows and bulls indiscriminately, the result has been that the elephant has left his old haunts, never to return. The Somalis wasted the entire carcase. They do not care to eat the flesh, and even the hide is not so beloved as that of the oryx and rhino. The Somali tusks were never of the vast proportions attained in other parts of Africa. Ivory still forms part of the stock of some trading caravans, so the elephants must exist in the flesh somewhere in Somaliland, unless these traders trade with others again at the rear of the back of beyond.
A twig cracked! No twig of mine, I swear, since I sat like a statue carved in stone. My foot had long since gone to sleep, and pins and needles pricked it. The bushes trembled, then were still, and stealthily, with very little movement, the beautiful antelope moved away. I saw him as he circled round a bend in the jungle, and in a flash he was gone. Really I had enjoyed my morning as keenly as though I had added to my bag an hundredfold.
And so back to camp I went, and as I went I notched the trees that I might find the right place in my “Hedd-Godir” (koodoo forest) again. I wanted Cecily to come with me and try and track my friend the lesser koodoo. When I got home, I found all the men congregated round one whom they said was grievously hurt through a camel falling on him. I couldn’t find anything wrong, no broken bones, but the man said the pain internally was very great, almost unbearable. I got out my hypodermic syringe and injected some of the morphia we had in case of emergencies into the arm, to the wonderment of the men, and then I had the invalid placed down on a camel-mat to sleep, and all the other men were forbidden to disturb the invalid. And lo! when the effects of the morphia wore off we heard no more of aches and pains. It was the cure of the trip. And the “coogeri” medicine was held in high esteem ever afterwards. I asked what “coogeri” meant, and was told—“inside.”
Sitting on a camp chair in peace and quietness, with a book and the cup that cheers, Clarence broke in on us to say that a party of twenty-five horsemen had arrived prepared to dibaltig before us—Heaven only knows why, or where the men had dropped from. With as good grace as we could, and a cup of tea in hand, we went outside the zareba to see a crowd of Somalis, mounted, in the usual lively get-up, khaili tobes, shields, spears, and the other necessaries of performers of the dibâltig. The ponies were so be-tasselled on a bright red band over the eyes, I don’t know how they were to see the way at all. One stalwart, the head-man of the party, had decorated his steed with a frill of lions’ mane around its neck, fastening in front with a large bunch of yellow ribbons. Very hot and uncomfortable for the pony, but very effective and circus-like.
“Salaam aleikum,” and “Mot! Mot! io Mot!” Then the chorister-in-chief (these dibâltig performances are somewhat like the “waits” at Christmas) began a long song, all—Clarence said—about us, wishing us health, happiness, and many wives.
“Wives, Clarence?”
“So says the song.”
“Then say we can’t have wives, because we are not sahibs, and some day we shall be wives ourselves.”
“With luck!” ejaculated Cecily.
Clarence translated, and a perfect tremor of excitement shook the whole team. The horsemen pressed closer, and gazed at us until their eyes nearly dropped out of their heads. Laughing at the intensity of the inspection, we took our hats off and bowed. Our hair might be considered adequate proof of Mem-sahibdom. Goodness knows what the team considered it. They drew back and talked and jabbered and discussed.
To dibâltig or not to dibâltig, that is the question. And how we hoped they would answer it in the negative, and let us get back to tea.
With a wild war-whoop the matter was decided, and girding up their loins, away and away, hither and thither dashed the performers, throwing spears, catching them, jumping off the pony, then vaulting the saddle, then back again, finally gaining a seat face to tail. A real circus show this. Going at a mad gallop the riders would suddenly jerk the bit—a perfect devil of cruelty—and back the foaming pony would go, haunches to the ground. Poor creatures, how lathered they were and beside themselves with the pace and rush. Dust rose in volumes, and we receded and receded, but the flying figures only drew the circle closer. The affair went on for a whole hour, when it had to cease because the ponies were done, and could not keep up the required speed any longer. All the Somalis came round us, the ponies’ heads facing us, almost touching us, and we must have been hidden entirely from our own men, because as our dibâltig friends sat their panting ponies they raised both arms with spears held high, and dear me, how they shouted that “Mot” sentence.
I signed with my hand that we wished to get out of the circle—it was not pleasant so near the panting, pawing ponies, and one big black-looking fellow backed his steed out and made a path. I thanked them through Clarence and then began the usual palaver about the inadequacy of the presents.
If every man had to have a tobe it meant twenty-five, and we had to economise or we should clear out our stock before we finished up at Berbera. We had started out with several pieces of sheeting, but had done an immense amount of distributing. A tobe when cut has to be about twelve times over the length from a man’s elbow to his finger tips. That is how we measured. We offered half a dozen tobes, and suggested that the performers should toss up for them.
A hurricane of stormy words ensued, most annoying, as six tobes at a whack is very generous indeed. The men could not be invited to a meal because the rice supplies would not bear any undue strain. The affair ended with the presentation of five good clasp knives. And then the dissatisfied warriors rode away. We took the opportunity of telling Clarence that if any more Somalis came bent on doing this dibâltig performance they must do it on their own. We had seen enough of it. And run on the present lines it is more expensive than a box at the opera. We went back to a second tea, and a bath to get rid of the dust that covered us like flour.
In the evening, Cecily and I again penetrated my koodoo forest by ourselves, more for the pleasure of wandering in the beautiful oasis than anything, and our search went farther than my stroll of the morning. We pushed and crawled our way through the densest thickets that we might find the reason for such flapping and screaming of dozens and dozens of vultures, kites and hawks. In a thicket of thorn where the durr grass grew high, and in patches left off altogether, and exposed the sand, lay the remains of a lesser koodoo. It had been partially eaten, but not by vultures, a lion evidently, because it had begun on the hind quarters and eaten about half the animal. The antelope’s head was thrown back, and the fore legs were tucked beneath him. The lion had sprung from the grass straight on to his prey. The horns swept the hunched shoulders, and I think it must have been my friend of the morning.
Judging by the way in which the birds were acting, coming near, and then retiring, and taking into consideration the fact that they had not ventured to the kill, it was likely that the lion was now lying close to the meat, watching it, until the internal arrangements permitted of eating some more. This is a very usual thing with the big cats. Was it nice to be in this durr grass with a lion, even a fed-up one?
We decided to hurry back to camp and try and get out some of the men before the light gave in, to build us a “machan” over the dead antelope, in which we should keep watch and ward all night in the hope of bagging the lion as he returned to his kill. Our first idea was that one of us—to be decided by tossing up—should remain in the jungly place to see that time was not taken by the forelock by his majesty. But, debating the point, we thought it was going to be a trifle lonely for the one left behind, with night, and possibly a lion, coming on.
We made our way out as quickly as possible, and careering back to camp as though all the fiends were after us, brought Clarence and four of the hunters with axes and hangols to the place where the koodoo had been. Had been! For there it was not when we returned. The dragging of the bushes and the crushed grass showed us the way. There at some two hundred yards off was all that now remained of the lesser koodoo.
A flash of sinuous yellow. A cry of “Libbah! Libbah!” from the left-hand hunter. The durr grass waved, and a fine lioness bounded high and sank again. Crack! from Cecily’s rifle. She must have been in better place than I was for a shot. I should have annihilated one of the men had I blazed away. Crack! again. And then I saw what the redoubtable Cecily was firing at. Another animal altogether! A massive lion, with an almost black mane and more cumbersome in the front than any other of his genus I had ever seen. All lions fall away very much behind, but I really think this one must have been malformed. However, we never saw him again, so the point had, perforce, to remain unsettled. As the lion streaked off, evidently not inconvenienced by Cecily’s bombardment, his mate made a successful effort to follow his lead. Flat, and low to earth, snake-like, she crossed the only bare patch of clearing to the right of me. Still my line of fire was blocked by a hunter who put himself in my way every time as if by design, and had not the sense to drop and give me a chance. Still, there was Clarence on the extreme right, armed with a 12-bore. The lioness would have to run the gauntlet of his fire. “Mâro! Mâro!” (Shoot! Shoot!) I cried to him in an agony of nervous Hindostanee.
The imperturbable Clarence did nothing, and let the yellow one pass him. Cecily was not now so placed that she could get in a successful shot. Two lions, and both gone! No koodoo left to attract anything save hyaenas and jackals. When I asked our shikari why on earth he had let slip so wonderful a chance he was quite calm and said: “Mem-sahib shoot dar lion. I no shoot dar lion.” Evidently he meant to be very magnanimous and refrain from poaching on our preserves in the laudable desire to see we got our money’s worth.
It was now getting dusk, and ominous dark corners told us night had cast her mantle athwart the trees. I ordered a hunter to cut off the head of the maltreated lesser koodoo, for the sake of the horns, a very easily acquired trophy, but one very well worth having. The head was not eaten at all, for as I have explained it is the habit of lions to begin at the other end.
Then we tried to get out of the place. We took some tosses over thorn and bramble, and disturbed the guinea fowl as they settled to roost in rows on the branches. I upset the equilibrium of a hornbill and his wife, who flapped and croaked their annoyance at me. Before we were clear of the oasis, night had settled down in inky blackness, and then Clarence led us by the hand. I believe he saw in the dark like a cat. He brought us safe and sound to the sandy waste that rimmed the green garden, and once there camp was easily reached.
All through the night the lions roared, and we could distinguish the difference in the voice of the lion to that of his mate. One would have thought they had eaten too much to roar—a whole lesser koodoo between them! Perhaps they were protesting that we had docked them of the head. Next day around the wells near where we were camped the pugs of two lions stood out clear in the sand, going from the oasis and back. The wells are too deep for wild creatures to negotiate, but water sometimes is to be had in the clay troughs used by the camels. These troughs were very dry, and I’m afraid that the lions went away thirsty. As it seemed an undoubted fact that the great cats were still in the fastness of green a mile or more in circumference, it did seem absurd for us to go on until we had made another effort to secure a fine trophy for the collection.
At the edge of the oasis, on the north side, before it finally ended in a yellow waste of sand, stood a few guda trees, difficult to climb, for no branches hold out kindly assistance for at least sixteen feet from the roots, when the tree spreads vigorously into fantastic shapes to the top, which attains a height of some fifty feet. The foliage is very wide, and beautifully green. Our idea was to climb a guda in the evening, having tied up a suitable bait below. It had to be a sheep, because we had no goat. We chose our tree, and when the witching hour of twilight arrived, armed with climbing-irons we began the ascent this-wise. First myself, to the astonishment of half our caravan, who had come to see what they should see. They liked the climbing-irons immensely. I don’t think they had seen any before.
When I was perched on the bough selected I flung the irons down to Cecily, who used them. Next, with cords, we drew up the rifles. Clarence and a hunter used the climbing irons also, and came up like woodpeckers. The men below tethered the sheep, and departed to camp and bed. It was not very long before we wished we had had a platform made. Not being birds, or bird-like, the perching business hurt frightfully. And it was only by getting well against the trunk we could put up with the position at all. Clarence lay extended full length along a bough, on the look-out—“ship-ahoy!” sort of game. The other hunter imagined himself a Blondin on an insignificant branch beyond me, slightly above me. A ridiculous situation we were all in. I longed to laugh out loud. But we had to be very, very silent and hardly move a muscle. After about an hour I began to get cramp in my foot, and had to press my boot hard against the bough to try to bear the agony calmly.
A roar broke on the stillness. Things were more interesting for a few moments, and Clarence’s tense figure outlined on the branch seemed to be an Argus of many eyes. The Blondin gentleman had got on my nerves long since, and I wished with all my heart he would take a seat. The clouds grew darker and darker, and presently rain began to fall, real Somali rain, not in single drops, but water-spouts. The hunter pirouetting on the adjacent bough missed his footing and fell to the ground—Somalis are not the slightest use as tree-climbers—and caused as much consternation to the sheep as the appearance of the lion could have done. The man had to be followed by the necessary humanitarian inquiries, and we reflected that no lion with an ounce of caution about him would have failed to take warning long ere this. The rain had damped our ardour as well as our clothes. We voted for camp and bed. Cecily affixed the irons to her boots and descended, and then I pulled them up again for my use. Clarence got the rifles down, and the fallen hunter had no need to get any lower. There we all stood in pouring rain. Clarence had to lead the hunter who claimed to be badly injured, and Cecily and I led the sheep.
The caravan was silent, fires out with the rain, but the watch was alert, for on our approach we heard, “Kuma?” (Who are you?) repeated twice. Clarence replied “Friends,” and we passed, and all was well—at least more or less, for the camp was in a dismal state of slop. A big rain-storm speedily turns the deep sand to mud. The men were sleeping beneath herios, and I think one or two had been making free with our tents, as they had a very hot native smell about them when we turned in to rid ourselves of our dripping garments. The canvas residences stood up well that night and resisted the downpour valiantly. Everything was damp and fires were impossible.
All the next day the deluge continued. It was no use to attempt to go a-hunting, as the rain was washing out spoor as fast as the animals walked. The day dragged through somehow, and bored us almost to tears. However, night saw a welcome cessation of the rain, and the sky grew clear and dotted with stars innumerable. The next morning had to see the camel-mats dried ere they could go on, and the sun was fortunately like a furnace.
In the evening we were able to trek some eight miles, and formed zareba by starlight. To get the fires lighted was a great difficulty, and the cook sent many messages by the “boy,” to encourage us in the belief supper would be forthcoming if we had the patience to wait long enough.
Chatting over the meal we realised that the hour had come when we might dawdle no longer. Time and the season bade us make a decided effort to cross the Haud again now that water was so plentiful. We sent for Clarence and talked to him, deciding to rise early on the morrow and get things into trim for the great undertaking.