The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
back to her, and even cheerfulness, during the first easy days of camp
life, before they left the semi-civilized coast-belt, with its shady
mango-trees for the midday halt, its unfailing water supply for the
thirsty porters and the white man's meals; its comparative safety at
night from wild beasts and wild natives.
But between the mountain ranges of the interior--whither they were
bound--and this settled country of cultivation and villages more or less
governed by the Sultan of Unguja, there lay a desert tract almost devoid
of water and ravaged in recent times by a clan of the raiding Masai
known to the Bantu natives as "Wahumba." They had recently carried out
a ruthless foray across the plains. The native wells had fallen in or
their location had been forgotten since the destruction of the villages.
Lucy then knew for the first time what it was to suffer from thirst, and
to have no water for washing in the morning or evening; and when a
little water was obtained from nearly dried up rock-pools or the bed of
a run-dry stream, to be hardly able to endure the sight of it, much less
taste it when it looked like strong tea, or coffee-and-milk, when it
smelt of stable manure or was alive with grubs or wriggling worms. It
could only be drunk in the form of tea after it had been strained,
boiled, and skimmed.
John had prepared for some such contingency in crossing this desert
strip by bringing several dozen coco-nuts and a case of his father's
cider--at the mention of which Lucy's mouth watered. But his porters in
their own mad thirst had disposed of the coco-nuts and their milk, and
the carrier who bore the case of champagne cider on his head had, of
course, slipped on a slimy boulder, crossing a dry stream down had come
his precious load, and at least half the bottles had cracked and poured
forth their sparkling contents over the sand or into the porter's
protruded mouth. Still, the other six bottles were retrieved by an
indignant John who, in his rage, doffed the gentle long-suffering
missionary--which, strange to say, he had become in these few
months--witness his unselfish and patient care of his rather peevish
wife--and kicked the careless, sticky, half-drunk porter with all the
vehemence of an unregenerate Englishman. The porter took his
chastisement philosophically. He had tasted nectar. John and Lucy drank
the remainder of the cider during the second half of that day, without
care for the morrow's drought, for fear lest they be robbed of it by
some other accident....
At last they reached a running stream at the base of the foothills which
marked the beginning of a slow ascent of three thousand feet. The
verdure, and the shade this created, seemed by contrast a Paradise. They
pitched their camp under fine umbrageous trees, near the site of a
ruined village which a few months previously had been a populous centre.
Around the mounds of clay and sticks and burnt thatch were luxuriant
banana plantations with occasional bunches of ripening bananas--though
the monkeys of the adjacent thicket had not left many fit for eating.
When Lucy had quenched her thirst exuberantly from the rivulet, drinking
from cups of folded banana fronds made for her by the repentant porter
of the broken cider bottles, her sense of relief and contentment at
their surroundings was a little marred by the consciousness of an
unpleasant odour which came to them fitfully in puffs of the afternoon
breeze. She started out to explore on her own account--she wore high
boots and had a tucked-in, constricted skirt. Presently she came to an
extensive clearing where banana trunks, brown and rotten, had been
felled and lay prone in all directions, half covered with the clay
tunnels and galleries of white ants. Amongst these crumbling cylinders
lay twenty or thirty skeletons, some of them still retaining strips of
leathery flesh and patches of Negro wool on the whitened skulls. The
ground at the rustle of her approach began to swarm with a myriad of
black, biting ants, disturbed in their daily meal off this immense
supply of carrion. Lucy paid little heed to them for the moment as she
stood horror-struck at the sight of hissing snakes, gliding into the
rank weeds, probably more concerned over the swarming of the ants than
at the approach of a solitary human being. She also noted a group of
large, grey-brown vultures with lean whitish necks, which hopped heavily
before her until they obtained enough impetus to rise above the ground
and settle on the branches of a baobab-tree. Lucy, horrified by this
unsavoury Golgotha and the slithering snakes, was uttering several
squeaks of dismay, when as the terrible "siafu" ants began to nip the
skin of her limbs and body, her cries changed to shrieks of terror.
Half-blindly she floundered over disgusting obstacles back towards the
camp.
John, looking very tired and very dirty, came rushing to meet her and
upbraid her for imprudence in wandering off alone where there was danger
at every turn; but, realizing she was being mercilessly bitten by the
"siafu," he hurried her into the tent, let down the flaps of the
entrance and assisted her to undress. She had to be reduced to absolute
nudity before the ants could be removed. They had fixed their mandibles
so firmly in the skin that in pulling them off the head and jaws
remained behind, and for weeks afterwards this unhappy young woman went
about with a sore and inflamed body.
But this seeming outrage on her modesty greatly eased their intercourse.
They had been for several days husband and wife, but there was still a
certain stiffness and reserve in their relations. This disappeared
after Lucy was obliged in broad daylight to submit her tortured body to
his ministrations. In this new camaraderie she was soon laughing over
her misadventure; whilst John acted clumsily as lady's maid.
Two days afterwards they were further drawn together by a thrill of
terror. The region having been temporarily depopulated by Masai raids,
wild beasts--lions, leopards, hyenas--had been emboldened in their
attacks. John's camping places were encircled each evening by a hedge
of thorns, and the porters kept up--or were supposed to keep up--blazing
fires. But one night in the small hours the tired sentries fell asleep,
the fire in front of the tent died down, a lion sprang the hedge,
crunched the sentry's skull, and tore at their tent doorway with his
claws--attracted by the smell of the donkeys tethered behind. His
horrible snarls and growls and the outcry of the awakened men roused
John and Lucy. In their movements they knocked over camp washstand and
table and could not find the matches or the lantern. John was uncertain
where to fire even when he had found his loaded rifle. He dared not
shoot into the midst of the growls, lest the bullet should kill the
plunging donkeys or strike one of his men. They in their
desperation--and, to do them justice, in their desire to save the white
man and his wife--were tackling the lion with firebrands, yet feared to
shoot his huge body--tangled up with tent ropes and tent flaps--lest
they should shoot master or mistress. Lucy swooned across the bed with
terror when she felt the lion's body pressed against the thin canvas of
the tent wall.... The tent, even, seemed in danger of collapsing under
the lion's pressure, as he backed on to it to face the men. At last,
fear of the fire dislodged him. He stood or rather crouched against a
pile of boxes for a few minutes; then realizing that the way to the exit
was clear, he bounded towards it over the dead body of the slain porter.
But before he quitted the premises he seized adroitly one of Lucy's two
milch goats and, breaking its neck, trailed it over his shoulders and
plunged down a ravine. The men followed him with a fusillade of shots
from their Snider rifles, but probably in the darkness all went wide.
The lion remained in the ravine alternately crunching and growling--but
_such_ growling!--the English verb is feeble to express the
blood-curdling sound.
Day broke at last. John roused himself, detached gently the
hysterically-clutching hands of his wife, who alternately implored him
not to expose himself to any more danger and not to leave her to die by
herself in the wilderness, but to turn back with her that very day and
seek for some safer Mission post at the Coast or in Unguja itself. He
put his clothes into better order, knelt and prayed for a few minutes:
then tidied the tent space a little and overhauled his rifle. Next,
rummaging for ammunition and putting it handy in his side pockets, he
issued from the tent, carefully fastening the door flaps after him. He
questioned the men in broken Swahili as to the lion's whereabouts.
"Chini, Bwana, hapa karibu, ndani ya bondee ... Below, master, near
here, within the ravine," they answered; and the lion, hearing the
raised voices, gave a confirmatory growl which reached to the ears of
the shaking Lucy in the tent. She arose, her teeth chattering with
terror, and looked out through a slit in the tent door. She saw and
heard John call for the headman and guessed that he was marshalling
eight of his most courageous porters, the "gunmen" of the expedition, to
sally out with him and attack the lion. This beast, having nearly
finished the goat, had no intention of leaving the neighbourhood of the
camp. He intended to have next, one by one, the two donkeys; and after
he had eaten them, the humans. The ravine seemed a convenient place in
which to repose till he was hungry again....
The porters read the lion's mind correctly: "He will wait there, master,
till we are breaking camp and then attack the donkeys, and perhaps the
one with Bibi on his back. We shall never get him in such a favourable
position again. See! He is down there below, looking up at us. He can
scarcely rush up this side of the ravine...." John Baines grasped the
situation; he quickly placed himself in the middle of the eight braves,
who knelt on one knee in between the tree stems on the edge of the steep
descent. All at the word "Fire!" sent a converging volley (which
deafened Lucy in the tent) at the great head with its wide-open yellow
eyes ... and as the smoke cleared away the head was a shapeless mass of
blood and brains and the lion was utterly dead.
A shout of triumph arose from the elated men, and the whole force of the
caravan--thirty-two men without the poor wretch who had been killed in
the night--went tumbling down the ravine to disembowel the lion and cut
off its skin for "Bwana" who had shown himself such a man of spirit.
John betook himself to Lucy's tent, exultant. He had killed a lion! He
almost forgot to kneel down and send up a thanksgiving for the Divine
protection accorded to them. Lucy dried her eyes and at last made an
effort to dress and swallow a little breakfast. As her nerves were
shattered by the "close call" they had had in the night, and as a burial
service must be held over the dead porter and the loads be readjusted,
John announced there would be no march that day.
But the next morning Lucy could hardly sit her donkey. And by ill-luck
the caravan had only just started and was passing through more ruined
banana plantations--another charnel house of the last Masai raid--when
it was abruptly halted by a shout of "Nyoka!" Owing to the obstacles of
the felled banana stems it was difficult to diverge from the narrow
track; and, barring the men's way, in the middle of that track an
unusually large "spitting" cobra had erected itself on the stiffened
tail-third of its length and was balancing its flattened, expanded body
to and fro, threatening the advance of the caravan. It should have been
a comparatively easy matter to fell it with a well-flung banana stem,