She
river for three or four hours. Once we came across a school of
hippopotami, which rose, and bellowed dreadfully at us within ten
or a dozen fathoms of the boat, much to Job’s alarm, and, I will
confess, to my own. These were the first hippopotami that we had
ever seen, and, to judge by their insatiable curiosity, I should
judge that we were the first white men that they had ever seen.
Upon my word, I once or twice thought that they were coming into
the boat to gratify it. Leo wanted to fire at them, but I
dissuaded him, fearing the consequences. Also, we saw hundreds of
crocodiles basking on the muddy banks, and thousands upon
thousands of water-fowl. Some of these we shot, and among them
was a wild goose, which, in addition to the sharp-curved spurs on
its wings, had a spur about three-quarters of an inch long
growing from the skull just between the eyes. We never shot
another like it, so I do not know if it was a “sport” or a
distinct species. In the latter case this incident may interest
naturalists. Job named it the Unicorn Goose.
About midday the sun grew intensely hot, and the stench drawn up
by it from the marshes which the river drains was something too
awful, and caused us instantly to swallow precautionary doses of
quinine. Shortly afterwards the breeze died away altogether, and
as rowing our heavy boat against stream in the heat was out of
the question, we were thankful enough to get under the shade of a
group of trees—a species of willow—that grew by the edge of the
river, and lie there and gasp till at length the approach of
sunset put a period to our miseries. Seeing what appeared to be
an open space of water straight ahead of us, we determined to row
there before settling what to do for the night. Just as we were
about to loosen the boat, however, a beautiful waterbuck, with
great horns curving forward, and a white stripe across the rump,
came down to the river to drink, without perceiving us hidden
away within fifty yards under the willows. Leo was the first to
catch sight of it, and, being an ardent sportsman, thirsting for
the blood of big game, about which he had been dreaming for
months, he instantly stiffened all over, and pointed like a
setter dog. Seeing what was the matter, I handed him his express
rifle, at the same time taking my own.
“Now then,” I whispered, “mind you don’t miss.”
“Miss!” he whispered back contemptuously; “I could not miss it if
I tried.”
He lifted the rifle, and the roan-coloured buck, having drunk his
fill, raised his head and looked out across the river. He was
standing right against the sunset sky on a little eminence, or
ridge of ground, which ran across the swamp, evidently a
favourite path for game, and there was something very beautiful
about him. Indeed, I do not think that if I live to a hundred I
shall ever forget that desolate and yet most fascinating scene;
it is stamped upon my memory. To the right and left were wide
stretches of lonely death-breeding swamp, unbroken and unrelieved
so far as the eye could reach, except here and there by ponds of
black and peaty water that, mirror-like, flashed up the red rays
of the setting sun. Behind us and before stretched the vista of
the sluggish river, ending in glimpses of a reed-fringed lagoon,
on the surface of which the long lights of the evening played as
the faint breeze stirred the shadows. To the west loomed the huge
red ball of the sinking sun, now vanishing down the vapoury
horizon, and filling the great heaven, high across whose arch the
cranes and wildfowl streamed in line, square, and triangle, with
flashes of flying gold and the lurid stain of blood. And then
ourselves—three modern Englishmen in a modern English
boat—seeming to jar upon and look out of tone with that
measureless desolation; and in front of us the noble buck limned
out upon a background of ruddy sky.
_Bang!_ Away he goes with a mighty bound. Leo has missed him.
_Bang!_ right under him again. Now for a shot. I must have one,
though he is going like an arrow, and a hundred yards away and
more. By Jove! over and over and over! “Well, I think I’ve wiped
your eye there, Master Leo,” I say, struggling against the
ungenerous exultation that in such a supreme moment of one’s
existence will rise in the best-mannered sportsman’s breast.
“Confound you, yes,” growled Leo; and then, with that quick smile
that is one of his charms lighting up his handsome face like a
ray of light, “I beg your pardon, old fellow. I congratulate you;
it was a lovely shot, and mine were vile.”
We got out of the boat and ran to the buck, which was shot
through the spine and stone dead. It took us a quarter of an hour
or more to clean it and cut off as much of the best meat as we
could carry, and, having packed this away, we had barely light
enough to row up into the lagoon-like space, into which, there
being a hollow in the swamp, the river here expanded. Just as the
light vanished we cast anchor about thirty fathoms from the edge
of the lake. We did not dare to go ashore, not knowing if we
should find dry ground to camp on, and greatly fearing the
poisonous exhalations from the marsh, from which we thought we
should be freer on the water. So we lighted a lantern, and made
our evening meal off another potted tongue in the best fashion
that we could, and then prepared to go to sleep, only, however,
to find that sleep was impossible. For, whether they were
attracted by the lantern, or by the unaccustomed smell of a white
man for which they had been waiting for the last thousand years
or so, I know not; but certainly we were presently attacked by
tens of thousands of the most blood-thirsty, pertinacious, and
huge mosquitoes that I ever saw or read of. In clouds they came,
and pinged and buzzed and bit till we were nearly mad. Tobacco
smoke only seemed to stir them into a merrier and more active
life, till at length we were driven to covering ourselves with
blankets, head and all, and sitting to slowly stew and
continually scratch and swear beneath them. And as we sat,
suddenly rolling out like thunder through the silence came the
deep roar of a lion, and then of a second lion, moving among the
reeds within sixty yards of us.
“I say,” said Leo, sticking his head out from under his blanket,
“lucky we ain’t on the bank, eh, Avuncular?” (Leo sometimes
addressed me in this disrespectful way.) “Curse it! a mosquito
has bitten me on the nose,” and the head vanished again.
Shortly after this the moon came up, and notwithstanding every
variety of roar that echoed over the water to us from the lions
on the banks, we began, thinking ourselves perfectly secure, to
gradually doze off.
I do not quite know what it was that made me poke my head out of
the friendly shelter of the blanket, perhaps because I found that
the mosquitoes were biting right through it. Anyhow, as I did so
I heard Job whisper, in a frightened voice—
“Oh, my stars, look there!”
Instantly we all of us looked, and this was what we saw in the
moonlight. Near the shore were two wide and ever-widening circles
of concentric rings rippling away across the surface of the
water, and in the heart and centre of the circles were two dark
moving objects.
“What is it?” asked I.
“It is those damned lions, sir,” answered Job, in a tone which
was an odd mixture of a sense of personal injury, habitual
respect, and acknowledged fear, “and they are swimming here to
_heat_ us,” he added, nervously picking up an “h” in his
agitation.
I looked again: there was no doubt about it; I could catch the
glare of their ferocious eyes. Attracted either by the smell of
the newly killed waterbuck meat or of ourselves, the hungry
beasts were actually storming our position.
Leo already had his rifle in his hand. I called to him to wait
till they were nearer, and meanwhile grabbed my own. Some fifteen
feet from us the water shallowed on a bank to the depth of about
fifteen inches, and presently the first of them—it was the
lioness—got on to it, shook herself, and roared. At that moment
Leo fired, the bullet went right down her open mouth and out at
the back of her neck, and down she dropped, with a splash, dead.
The other lion—a full-grown male—was some two paces behind her.
At this second he got his forepaws on to the bank, when a strange
thing happened. There was a rush and disturbance of the water,
such as one sees in a pond in England when a pike takes a little
fish, only a thousand times fiercer and larger, and suddenly the
lion gave a most terrific snarling roar and sprang forward on to
the bank, dragging something black with him.
“Allah!” shouted Mahomed, “a crocodile has got him by the leg!”
and sure enough he had. We could see the long snout with its
gleaming lines of teeth and the reptile body behind it.
And then followed an extraordinary scene indeed. The lion managed
to get well on to the bank, the crocodile half standing and half
swimming, still nipping his hind leg. He roared till the air
quivered with the sound, and then, with a savage, shrieking
snarl, turned round and clawed hold of the crocodile’s head. The
crocodile shifted his grip, having, as we afterwards discovered,
had one of his eyes torn out, and slightly turned over; instantly
the lion got him by the throat and held on, and then over and
over they rolled upon the bank struggling hideously. It was
impossible to follow their movements, but when next we got a
clear view the tables had turned, for the crocodile, whose head
seemed to be a mass of gore, had got the lion’s body in his iron
jaws just above the hips, and was squeezing him and shaking him
to and fro. For his part, the tortured brute, roaring in agony,
was clawing and biting madly at his enemy’s scaly head, and
fixing his great hind claws in the crocodile’s, comparatively
speaking, soft throat, ripping it open as one would rip a glove.
Then, all of a sudden, the end came. The lion’s head fell forward
on the crocodile’s back, and with an awful groan he died, and the
crocodile, after standing for a minute motionless, slowly rolled
over on to his side, his jaws still fixed across the carcase of
the lion, which, we afterwards found, he had bitten almost in
halves.
This duel to the death was a wonderful and a shocking sight, and
one that I suppose few men have seen—and thus it ended.
When it was all over, leaving Mahomed to keep a look out, we
managed to spend the rest of the night as quietly as the
mosquitoes would allow.
VI.
AN EARLY CHRISTIAN CEREMONY
Next morning, at the earliest light of dawn, we rose, performed
such ablutions as circumstances would allow, and generally made
ready to start. I am bound to say that when there was sufficient
light to enable us to see each other’s faces I, for one, burst