Robert Michael Ballantyne - Hunting the Lions

Meanwhile Tom Brown and the lieutenant had overtaken and killed the other animal, so that they returned to camp well laden with the best part of the meat of three buffaloes.

Here, while resting after the toils of the day, beside the roaring camp-fires, and eating their well-earned supper, Hicks the trader told them that a native had brought news of a desperate attack by lions on a kraal not more than a day’s journey from where they lay.

“It’s not far out o’ the road,” said Hicks, who was a white man—of what country no one knew—with a skin so weather-beaten by constant exposure that it was more like leather than flesh; “if you want some sport in that way, I’d advise ’ee to go there to-morrow.”

“Want some sport in that way!” echoed Wilkins in an excited tone; “why, what do you suppose we came here for? Of course we’ll go there at once; that is, if my comrades have no objection.”

“With all my heart,” said the major with a smile as he carefully filled his beloved pipe.

Tom Brown said nothing; but he smoked his pipe quietly, and nodded his head gently, and felt a slight but decided swelling of the heart, as he murmured inwardly to himself, “Yes, I’ll have a slap at the lions to-morrow.”

But Tom was wrong. Either the report had been false, or the lions had a special intimation that certain destruction approached them; for our hunters waited two nights at the native kraal without seeing one, although the black king thereof stoutly affirmed that they had attacked the cattle enclosures nearly every night for a week past, and committed great havoc.

One piece of good fortune, however, attended them, which was that they unexpectedly met with the large party which the major had expressed his wish to join. It consisted of about thirty men, four of whom were sportsmen, and the rest natives, with about twenty women and children, twelve horses, seventy oxen, five wagons, and a few dogs; all under the leadership of a trader named Hardy.

Numerous though the oxen were, there were not too many of them, as the reader may easily believe when we tell him that the wagons were very large, clumsy, and heavily laden,—one of them, besides other things, carrying a small boat—and that it occasionally required the powers of twenty oxen to drag one wagon up some of the bad hills they encountered on the journey to the Zulu country.

The four sportsmen, who were named respectively Pearson, Ogilvie, Anson, and Brand, were overjoyed at the addition to the party of Tom Brown and his companions, the more so that Tom was a doctor, for the constitutions of two of them, Ogilvie and Anson, had proved to be scarcely capable of withstanding the evil effects of the climate. Tom prescribed for them so successfully that they soon regained their strength; a result which he believed, however, was fully as much due to the cheering effects of the addition to their social circle as to medicine.

Having rested at the kraal a few days, partly to recruit the travellers, and partly to give the lions an opportunity of returning and being shot, the whole band set forth on their journey to the Umveloose river, having previously rendered the king of the kraal and his subjects happy by a liberal present of beads, brass wire, blue calico, and blankets.

At the kraal they had procured a large quantity of provisions for the journey—amobella meal for porridge, mealies, rice, beans, potatoes, and water-melons; and, while there, they had enjoyed the luxury of as much milk as they could drink; so that all the party were in pretty good condition and excellent spirits when they left. But this did not last very long, for the weather suddenly changed, and rain fell in immense quantities. The long rank grass of those regions became so saturated that it was impossible to keep one’s-self dry; and, to add to their discomforts, mosquitoes increased in numbers to such an extent that some of the European travellers could scarcely obtain a wink of sleep.

“Oh dear!” groaned poor Wilkins, one night as he lay between the major and Tom Brown on the wet grass under the shelter of a bullock-wagon covered with a wet blanket; “how I wish that the first mosquito had never been born!”

“If the world could get on without rain,” growled the major, “my felicity would be complete. There is a particular stream which courses down the underside of the right shaft of the wagon, and meets with some obstruction just at the point which causes it to pour continuously down my neck. I’ve shifted my position twice, but it appears to follow me, and I have had sensations for the last quarter of an hour which induce me to believe that a rivulet is bridged by the small of my back. Ha! have you killed him this time?”

The latter remark was addressed to Tom Brown, who had for some time past been vigorously engaged slapping his own face in the vain hope of slaying his tormentors—vain, not only because they were too quick to be caught in that way, but also, because, if slain by hundreds at every blow, there would still have remained thousands more to come on!

“No,” replied Tom, with a touch of bitterness in his tone; “he’s not dead yet.”

“He?” exclaimed Wilkins; “do you mean to say that you are troubled by only one of the vile creatures?”

“Oh no!” said Tom; “there are millions of ’em humming viciously round my head at this moment, but one of them is so big and assiduous that I have come to recognise his voice—there! d’you hear it?”

“Hear it!” cried Wilkins; “how can you expect me to hear one of yours when I am engaged with a host of my own? Ah! but I hear that ,” he added, laughing, as another tremendous crack resounded from Tom Brown’s cheek; “what a tough skin you must have, to be sure, to stand such treatment?”

“I am lost in admiration of the amiableness of your temper, Tom,” remarked the major. “If I were to get such a slap in the face as that, even from myself, I could not help flying in a passion. Hope the enemy is defeated at last?”

“I—I—think so,” said Tom, in that meditative tone which assures the listener that the speaker is intensely on the qui vive ; “yes, I believe I have —eh—no—there he—oh!”

Another pistol-shot slap concluded the sentence, and poor Tom’s companions in sorrow burst into a fit of laughter.

“Let ’im bite, sir,” growled the deep bass voice of Hardy, who lay under a neighbouring wagon; “when he’s got his beak well shoved into you, and begins to suck, he can’t get away so quick, ’cause of havin’ to pull it out again! hit out hard and quick then, an’ you’re sure of him. But the best way’s to let ’em bite, an’ go to sleep.”

“Good advice; I’ll try to take it,” said Tom, turning round with a sigh, and burying his face in the blanket. His companions followed his example, and in spite of rain and mosquitoes were soon fast asleep.

This wet weather had a very depressing effect on their spirits, and made the region so unhealthy that it began ere long to tell on the weaker members of the sporting party; as for the natives, they, being inured to it, were proof against everything. Being all but naked, they did not suffer from wet garments; and as they smeared their bodies over with grease, the rain ran off them as it does off the ducks. However, it did not last long at that time. In a few days the sky cleared, and the spirits of the party revived with their health.

The amount of animal life seen on the journey was amazing. All travellers in Africa have borne testimony to the fact that it teems with animals. The descriptions which, not many years ago, were deemed fabulous, have been repeated to us as sober truth by men of unquestionable veracity. Indeed, no description, however vivid, can convey to those whose personal experience has been limited to the fields of Britain an adequate conception of the teeming millions of living creatures, great and small, four-footed and winged, which swarm in the dense forests and mighty plains of the African wilderness.