Stories by English Authors: Africa (Selected by Scribners)
Here Quatermain held up his right hand to the light and showed us four or five white cicatrices just where the wrist is set into the hand.
“But it was not of the slightest use,” he went on; “the cartridge would not move. I only hope that no other man will ever be put in such an awful position. The lioness gathered herself together, and I gave myself up for lost, when suddenly Tom shouted out from somewhere in my rear:
“‘You are walking on to the wounded cub; turn to the right.’
“I had the sense, dazed as I was, to take the hint, and slewing round at right angles, but still keeping my eyes on the lioness, I continued my backward walk.
“To my intense relief, with a low growl she straightened herself, turned, and bounded off farther up the kloof.
“‘Come on, inkoos,’ said Tom, ‘let’s get back to the waggon.’
“‘All right, Tom,’ I answered. ‘I will when I have killed those three other lions,’ for by this time I was bent on shooting them as I never remember being bent on anything before or since. ‘You can go if you like, or you can get up a tree.’
“He considered the position a little, and then he very wisely got up a tree. I wish that I had done the same.
“Meanwhile I had found my knife, which had an extractor in it, and succeeded after some difficulty in hauling out the case which had so nearly been the cause of my death, and removing the obstruction in the barrel. It was very little thicker than a postage-stamp; certainly not thicker than a piece of writing-paper. This done, I loaded the gun, bound a handkerchief round my wrist and hand to staunch the flowing of the blood, and started on again.
“I had noticed that the lioness went into a thick green bush, or rather cluster of bushes, growing near the water; for there was a little stream running down the kloof, about fifty yards higher up and for this I made. When I got there, however, I could see nothing, so I took up a big stone and threw it into the bushes. I believe that it hit the other cub, for out it came with a rush, giving me a broadside shot, of which I promptly availed myself, knocking it over dead. Out, too, came the lioness like a flash of light, but quick as she went I managed to put the other bullet into her ribs, so that she rolled right over three times like a shot rabbit. I instantly got two more cartridges into the gun, and as I did so the lioness rose again and came crawling toward me on her fore paws, roaring and groaning, and with such an expression of diabolical fury on her countenance as I have not often seen. I shot her again through the chest, and she fell over on to her side quite dead.
“That was the first and last time that I ever killed a brace of lions right and left, and, what is more, I never heard of anybody else doing it. Naturally I was considerably pleased with myself, and having again loaded up, I went on to look for the black-maned beauty who had killed Kaptein. Slowly, and with the greatest care, I proceeded up the kloof, searching every bush and tuft of grass as I went. It was wonderfully exciting work, for I never was sure from one moment to another but that he would be on me. I took comfort, however, from the reflection that a lion rarely attacks a man, – rarely, I say; sometimes he does, as you will see, – unless he is cornered or wounded. I must have been nearly an hour hunting after that lion. Once I thought I saw something move in a clump of tambouki grass, but I could not be sure, and when I trod out the grass I could not find him.
“At last I worked up to the head of the kloof, which made a cul-de-sac. It was formed of a wall of rock about fifty feet high. Down this rock trickled a little waterfall, and in front of it, some seventy feet from its face, was a great piled-up mass of boulders, in the crevices and on the top of which grew ferns, grasses, and stunted bushes. This mass was about twenty-five feet high. The sides of the kloof here were also very steep. Well, I came to the top of the nullah and looked all round. No signs of the lion. Evidently I had either overlooked him farther down or he had escaped right away. It was very vexatious; but still three lions were not a bad bag for one gun before dinner, and I was fain to be content. Accordingly I departed back again, making my way round the isolated pillar of boulders, beginning to feel, as I did so, that I was pretty well done up with excitement and fatigue, and should be more so before I had skinned those three lions. When I had got, as nearly as I could judge, about eighteen yards past the pillar or mass of boulders, I turned to have another look round. I have a pretty sharp eye, but I could see nothing at all.
“Then, on a sudden, I saw something sufficiently alarming. On the top of the mass of boulders, opposite to me, standing out clear against the rock beyond, was the huge black-maned lion. He had been crouching there, and now arose as though by magic. There he stood lashing his tail, just like a living reproduction of the animal on the gateway of Northumberland House that I have seen a picture of. But he did not stand long. Before I could fire – before I could do more than get the gun to my shoulder – he sprang straight up and out from the rock, and driven by the impetus of that one mighty bound came hurtling through the air toward me.
“Heavens! how grand he looked, and how awful! High into the air he flew, describing a great arch. Just as he touched the highest point of his spring I fired. I did not dare to wait, for I saw that he would clear the whole space and land right upon me. Without a sight, almost without aim, I fired, as one would fire a snap-shot at a snipe. The bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second I was swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad bush, which broke the shock), and the lion was on the top of me, and the next those great white teeth of his had met in my thigh – I heard them grate against the bone. I yelled out in agony, for I did not feel in the least benumbed and happy, like Dr. Livingstone, – whom, by the way, I knew very well, – and gave myself up for dead. But suddenly, at that moment, the lion’s grip on my thigh loosened, and he stood over me, swaying to and fro, his huge mouth, from which the blood was gushing, wide opened. Then he roared, and the sound shook the rocks.
“To and fro he swung, and then the great head dropped on me, knocking all the breath from my body, and he was dead. My bullet had entered in the centre of his chest and passed out on the right side of the spine about half way down the back.
“The pain of my wound kept me from fainting, and as soon as I got my breath I managed to drag myself from under him. Thank heavens, his great teeth had not crushed my thigh-bone; but I was losing a great deal of blood, and had it not been for the timely arrival of Tom, with whose aid I got the handkerchief from my wrist and tied it round my leg, twisting it tight with a stick, I think that I should have bled to death.
“Well, it was a just reward for my folly in trying to tackle a family of lions single-handed. The odds were too long. I have been lame ever since, and shall be to my dying day; in the month of March the wound always troubles me a great deal, and every three years it breaks out raw. I need scarcely add that I never traded the lot of ivory at Sikukuni’s. Another man got it – a German – and made five hundred pounds out of it after paying expenses. I spent the next month on the broad of my back, and was a cripple for six months after that. And now I’ve told you the yarn, so I will have a drop of Hollands and go to bed.”
KING BEMBA’S POINT, A WEST AFRICAN STORY, By J. Landers
We were for the most part a queer lot out on that desolate southwest African coast, in charge of the various trading stations that were scattered along the coast, from the Gaboon River, past the mouth of the mighty Congo, to the Portuguese city of St. Paul de Loanda. A mixture of all sorts, especially bad sorts: broken-down clerks, men who could not succeed anywhere else, sailors, youths, and some whose characters would not have borne any investigation; and we very nearly all drank hard, and those who didn’t drink hard took more than was good for them.
I don’t know exactly what induced me to go out there. I was young for one thing, the country was unknown, the berth was vacant, and the conditions of it easy.
Imagine a high rocky point or headland, stretching out sideways into the sea, and at its base a small river winding into a country that was seemingly a blank in regard to inhabitants or cultivation; a land continuing for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see, one expanse of long yellow grass, dotted here and there with groups of bastard palms. In front of the headland rolled the lonely South Atlantic; and, as if such conditions were not dispiriting enough to existence upon the Point, there was yet another feature which at times gave the place a still more ghastly look. A long way off the shore, the heaving surface of the ocean began, in anything like bad weather, to break upon the shoals of the coast. Viewed from the top of the rock, the sea at such times looked, for at least two miles out, as if it were scored over with lines of white foam; but lower down, near the beach, each roller could be distinctly seen, and each roller had a curve of many feet, and was an enormous mass of water that hurled itself shoreward until it curled and broke.
When I first arrived on the Point there was, I may say, only one house upon it, and that belonged to Messrs. Flint Brothers, of Liverpool. It was occupied by one solitary man named Jackson; he had had an assistant, but the assistant had died of fever, and I was sent to replace him. Jackson was a man of fifty at least, who had been a sailor before he had become an African trader. His face bore testimony to the winds and weather it had encountered, and wore habitually a grave, if not melancholy, expression. He was rough but kind to me, and though strict was just, which was no common feature in an old African hand to one who had just arrived on the coast.
He kept the factory – we called all houses on the coast factories – as neat and clean as if it had been a ship. He had the floor of the portion we dwelt in holystoned every week; and numberless little racks and shelves were fitted up all over the house. The outside walls glittered with paint, and the yard was swept clean every morning; and every Sunday, at eight o’clock and sunset, the ensign was hoisted and lowered, and an old cannon fired at the word of command. Order and rule were with Jackson observed from habit, and were strictly enforced by him on all the natives employed in the factory.
Although I have said the country looked as if uninhabited, there were numerous villages hidden away in the long grass and brushwood, invisible at a distance, being huts of thatch or mud, and not so high as the grass among which they were placed. From these villages came most of our servants, and also the middlemen, who acted as brokers between us, the white men, and the negroes who brought ivory and gum and india-rubber from the far interior for sale. Our trade was principally in ivory, and when an unusually large number of elephants’ tusks arrived upon the Point for sale, it would be crowded with Bushmen, strange and uncouth, and hideously ugly, and armed, and then we would be very busy; for sometimes as many as two hundred tusks would be brought to us at the same time, and each of these had to be bargained for and paid for by exchange of cotton cloths, guns, knives, powder, and a host of small wares.
For some time after my arrival our factory, along with the others on the coast belonging to Messrs. Flint Brothers, was very well supplied by them with goods for the trade; but by degrees their shipments became less frequent, and small when they did come. In spite of repeated letters we could gain no reason from the firm for this fact, nor could the other factories, and gradually we found ourselves with an empty storehouse, and nearly all our goods gone. Then followed a weary interval, during which we had nothing whatever to do, and day succeeded day through the long hot season. It was now that I began to feel that Jackson had become of late more silent and reserved with me than ever he had been. I noticed, too, that he had contracted a habit of wandering out to the extreme end of the Point, where he would sit for hours gazing upon the ocean before him. In addition to this, he grew morose and uncertain in his temper toward the natives, and sometimes he would fall asleep in the evenings on a sofa, and talk to himself at such a rate while asleep that I would grow frightened and wake him, when he would stare about him for a little until he gathered consciousness, and then he would stagger off to bed to fall asleep again almost immediately. Also, his hands trembled much, and he began to lose flesh. All this troubled me, for his own sake as well as my own, and I resolved to ask him to see the doctor of the next mail-steamer that came. With this idea I went one day to the end of the Point, and found him in his usual attitude, seated on the long grass, looking seaward. He did not hear me approach, and when I spoke he started to his feet, and demanded fiercely why I disturbed him. I replied, as mildly as I could, for I was rather afraid of the glittering look that was in his eyes, that I wished to ask him if he did not feel ill.
He regarded me with a steady but softened glance for a little, and then said:
“My lad, I thank you for your trouble; but I want no doctor. Do you think I’m looking ill?”
“Indeed you are,” I answered, “ill and thin; and, do you know, I hear you talk to yourself in your sleep nearly every night.”
“What do I say?” he asked eagerly.
“That I cannot tell,” I replied. “It is all rambling talk; the same things over and over again, and nearly all about one person – Lucy.”
“Boy!” he cried out, as if in pain, or as if something had touched him to the quick, “sit you down, and I’ll tell you why I think of her – she was my wife.”
He moved nearer to the edge of the cliff, and we sat down, almost over the restless sea beneath us.
“She lives in my memory,” he continued, speaking more to himself than to me, and looking far out to the horizon, beneath which the setting sun had begun to sink, “in spite of all I can do or think of to make her appear base in my eyes. For she left me to go with another man – a scoundrel. This was how it was,” he added, quickly: “I married her, and thought her as pure as a flower; but I could not take her to sea with me because I was only the mate of a vessel, so I left her among her own friends, in the village where she was born. In a little cottage by herself I settled her, comfortable and happy as I thought. God! how she hung round my neck and sobbed when I went away the first time! and yet – yet – within a year she left me.” And he stopped for several minutes, resting his head upon his hands. “At first I could get no trace of her,” he resumed. “Her friends knew nothing more of her than that she had left the village suddenly. Gradually I found out the name of the scoundrel who had seduced her away. He had bribed her friends so that they were silent; but I overbribed them with the last money I had, and I followed him and my wife on foot. I never found them, nor did I ever know why she had deserted me for him. If I had only known the reason; if I could have been told of my fault; if she had only written to say that she was tired of me; that I was too old, too rough for her soft ways, – I think I could have borne the heavy stroke the villain had dealt me better. The end of my search was that I dropped down in the streets of Liverpool, whither I thought I had tracked them, and was carried to the hospital with brain-fever upon me. Two months afterward I came out cured, and the sense of my loss was deadened within me, so that I could go to sea again, which I did, before the mast, under the name of Jackson, in a bark that traded to this coast here.” And the old sailor rose to his feet and turned abruptly away, leaving me sitting alone.
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