by Osa Johnson
“Hey,” Martin cried excitedly. “That was a piece of luck. I guess we’re better when we don’t take aim than when we do!”
“What do you mean?” I was indignant. “I took aim, and that’s the one one I picked!”
“All right, Annie Oakley.” Martin laughed. “If you can pick ’em off at four hundred yards, our troubles are over, and that’s all right with me!”
“That’s the one I aimed at, I tell you!”
Martin laughed as we drove over the rough ground toward it. “The thing for us to do from now on,” he said, not believing me in the least, “is pick a big, well-bunched herd. Can’t very well miss that way.”
I was so furious with him I couldn’t speak, but when we stopped at the side of the sleek, tawny animal, I forgot about being angry. The soft eyes of the lovely creature were wide open, and they seemed to look straight at me with reproach for taking his life. I turned away and burst into tears.
“I wish I hadn’t killed him!” I sobbed in Martin’s neck. “He’s so harmless—and so beautiful!”
* * *
—
Blayney Percival threw back his head and laughed. We were at home again in Nairobi and telling him the troubles, thick and varied, that had crowded about us in the Athi River region.
“I should have told you,” he said when he was able to get his breath, “but everybody who ever comes to Africa, either with a gun or camera, has the same devilish time of it. I don’t know whether it’s the light or atmosphere, but whatever it is, it’s almost impossible to aim or focus accurately until you’re accustomed to it.”
“Well, at any rate,” Martin grinned, “you’ve given us something to blame beside ourselves!”
“Probably accounts for those elephants turning into zebra, too,” I said with relief.
“Well, one thing you don’t hear me asking now, Blayney,” Martin said, “is when we’re going to push off to that uncharted lake of yours. I know we’re not ready.”
“Right,” Blayney said, rising to go. “Just knock around here for a while longer—fifty or sixty miles out of Nairobi. I’ll be the first to tell you when you’re ready for the long safari.”
When Rattray of Isiolo was attacked by a leopard, he had to kill it in self-defense, but not without injury to him and his dog. Martin took this photograph shortly thereafter.
A visitor drops in for breakfast at Lake Paradise.
Air view of massive herd of bush elephants in Lorian Swamp.
Common zebra grazing.
Giraffe on the Northern Frontier.
This lioness seems to have spotted a potential meal. Generally lionesses, not their mates, make the kills.
Ample supper for the whole clan.
Meru dandy with traditional long ear lobes, brass ornaments, and, his chief pride, a London hat.
Lion with a curly mane leaving his cave.
Hyena, skulking scavenger of the African plains, which often secures the remains of the lions’ kill.
Proof that a leopard’s spots can blend perfectly with his natural background.
Adult female gorilla.
Two gorilla youngsters.
Two young friends, gorilla Snowball and chimpanzee Beebee.
Martin, with Snowball on his lap.
Chapter 18
We met John Walsh in Nairobi at one of the native markets. His occupation was “killin’ meat,” and he was completely matter-of-fact about it. Weathered and hard as a knot of hickory, nevertheless his sandy hair was sprinkled with gray, and his back was quite bent. He was very sensitive about his age and tried to straighten his round shoulders whenever he caught us looking at him.
“Totin’ bucks like them’s what’s done it,” this with a jerk of his thumb two fine impalas lying on the floor of the market, both properly “hallaled.” When he got to know us a little better, he confessed to sixty years, but he was probably well over seventy.
Martin eyed him with proper respect. A man of his age who could make a living that way must know his business.
Mr. Walsh concluded his dickering with the native market owner—grumbling out of habit, I’m sure—and, pushing whatever money he had collected into a greasy snap purse, was about to climb into his old Ford when Martin stopped him.
“I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Walsh,” he said.
“Shoot,” replied Mr. Walsh. “I ain’t got much time.”
He scratched his back impatiently through the rips in an amazingly clean blue shirt and squinted at us speculatively under the stiff brim of a tattered helmet. I think he had the narrowest, sharpest pair of eyes I’d ever looked into.
The upshot of this talk was that John Walsh put himself and his old Ford at our disposal, together with his place on a plateau near the edge of the Athi Plains some forty miles from town. His price was five dollars a day, we to supply our own groceries and kill our own meat. He sketched a rough map which he shoved into Martin’s hand, then put his Ford into a sort of standing jump and was off down the street in a cloud of blue stench that hung on the air long after he had gone from sight.
We left early the next morning, Father Johnson, Martin, and I—and Kalowatt, of course—but no porters. We’d had our fill of them for the time being. Mr. Walsh’s map, while apparently haphazard, was accurate, and we drove up to his place around nine o’clock. I don’t know when I had seen anything as bleak, unless it was Mr. Walsh himself. A two-room shanty of galvanized sheet iron was about all there was to it. No trees or garden. The house inside, while clean enough, was cluttered with rubbish that had in it everything from old boots beyond repair to empty gin bottles, tattered shirts, trousers, and hats of assorted sizes, a dozen or so tin harmonicas, and a broken feather fan. Moreover, every corner was piled high with London newspapers and “penny dreadfuls,” all yellowed with age and, in some instances, dating back as far as the nineties.
One of the many intriguing things about Mr. Walsh was his ability to conceive a fantastic idea and stick to it. His chief notion concerning us was that we were rich Americans—most likely actors in the movin’-picture business, since we had a camera with us—and that we were in Africa to collect some antlers, skins, tusks, and such to take back to Hollywood.
He always talked very rapidly and never listened to anybody. We knew he wasn’t deaf because we’d tested him to find out.
“I’ll go git ’em,” he said, all ready to jump into his Ford early the next morning. “You set here. Five dollars an antler, twenty-five dollars a skin.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Martin yelled, and tried carefully for perhaps the tenth time to explain that less than anything else did we want trophies of animals, that we wanted pictures.
Mr. Walsh nodded impatiently. “All right, all right—twenty dollars a skin.”
The old fellow shifted into gear, but before he could get away, Martin and I jumped in beside him with our guns and light camera. Never had I had such a ride. John Walsh crouched behind the wheel, his old helmet pulled forward, his red-whiskered chin stuck out, and away we flew. In no time at all we were in animal country, and here we found that roads seemed a matter of complete indifference to this demoniac Ford, which, though apparently falling to pieces in every vital part, nevertheless seemed capable of outrunning any animal on its own ground. Up hill and down dale we went until we sighted a herd of kongoni. This was all old John really needed to start him moving. Pulling his helmet almost to the bridge of his thin nose, he jammed the throttle to the floor and catapulted us into the middle of the startled beasts. Then he turned to Martin.
“Well, here you are, Mr. Johnson,” he said.
Naturally, by the time Martin had his camera set up and focused, there wasn’t an animal in sight.
Mr. Walsh shrugged. “Well,” he said, “I done my part,” and wi
th that rushed us back to his place again.
“Craziest hunter feller I ever seed,” he confided to Father Johnson about Martin.
Poor Father Johnson was in no mood for confidences, however. He had his hands full with Kalowatt. For an hour, it seemed, she had chased John Walsh’s skinny chickens around among the thornbushes and, catching them, had, each time, turned them about, held them firmly, and carefully plucked out their tail feathers.
I laughed—I couldn’t stop laughing—and it served me right that in that instant Kalowatt was off again. This time I chased her, but not before she had caught a terrified rooster whose tail feathers were already half gone and applied herself with utmost thoroughness to pull out the other half. John Walsh bounded toward her, cursing. She leaped to my arms for protection and looked surprised and hurt when I spanked her soundly. It was no use, however, for by the time we left for Nairobi a week later, I doubt that there was a tail feather left among all twenty chickens.
Martin decided that night to experiment with building a camera blind near a water hole about two miles from Mr. Walsh’s. We all went to work on it the next morning—Martin, his father, and I—and I thought when we got through that we had done a very nice job, since there was nothing at all to distinguish the blind from the clumps of growing thornbush in the vicinity. We went back late that afternoon and crouched hopefully behind the camera. After a long wait, the animals began to come one by one—zebra, impala, kongoni, ostrich. For no reason that we could figure out, however, they didn’t go down to the water but kept just out of camera range, milled around for about two hours, and went away. Martin had much more patience than I, for after three days of this I had none left, and besides, my knees gave out. I simply couldn’t crouch any longer. Father Johnson went with him the next afternoon and I remained home. Mr. Walsh had washed his hands of us by this time. We could stay in his place as long as we liked, he said—five dollars a day, payable every morning before breakfast—if we kept our ape away from his chickens. This declaration made, he went about his business of bagging meat for the native market in Nairobi, and we were left to our own devices.
On the day I stayed home, I mixed up a nice big meal out of our own stores for old John’s poor skinny fowls and sat lazily inside the doorway with Kalowatt—now forcibly restrained—watching them eat it, when right into my vision, not fifty yards away, walked a beautiful Tommy gazelle. I ran and got my gun and aimed carefully at his proud head.
“How pleased Martin will be,” I thought, “when he comes home and finds gazelle chops for dinner.” My aim wavered, however, for there were no porters now demanding meat. I shot into the sky and the Tommy galloped off—warned, I hoped, against coming around when Mr. Walsh was at home. All I was able to give my husband and his father for dinner that night was tinned meat and vegetables and some dried fruit. Martin said he guessed we’d go back to Nairobi in the morning.
“Any luck in the blind this evening?” I ventured to ask after a while.
“Warthogs!” Martin replied disgustedly.
I thought the pictures of the warthogs were extremely interesting. We were back at our home in Nairobi. Martin had developed and printed them and was projecting them along with some other odds and ends of things he’d photographed at the Athi River.
“Why, that’s simply wonderful photography, Martin,” I said. “Just look how the cross-lighting hits the bumps on these hogs.”
“Yes,” Martin growled, “and just look at three months in Africa with nothing but warthogs to show for it—look how that hits our pocketbook!”
The little bit of film ended, he snapped off the projection lights.
“Warthogs,” he muttered to himself.
Blayney Percival saw the warthog picture a few days later and thought it fine.
“You’re getting on to the peculiarities of the atmosphere now, old man,” he said to Martin. “Another short trip or two and you’ll be ready for anything.”
“We were thinking we’d like to get into big-animal country this next trip,” Martin said.
Blayney Percival nodded and spread a map on the table.
“Here’s the place I suggest.” He pointed to a spot northeast of Nairobi. “The Ithanga hills. They rise right up out of the plains, and because there’s plenty of shelter and water, animals are drawn to them from miles around.”
“Lions too?” Father Johnson asked hopefully. “I was sort of hoping I’d see one before I went home—a wild one, I mean.”
Blayney smiled. “They’re there, all right. Lions, rhinos, leopards, and especially the buffalo.”
I shivered a little. Carl Akeley had pronounced this big creature the fiercest animal in all Africa.
“Around in here,” our game-warden friend continued, pointing to a spot on the map in the southern part of the Ithangas, “is the Whitehead plantation. I’ve already told Mr. Whitehead about you—he and his wife are charming English people—and they’ll be more than happy to have you as their guests any time you care to go.”
“The sooner the better,” Martin shouted jubilantly. “That’s what we want, big-animal country!” Then, after a moment’s thoughtful study of the map, “I appreciate it a lot, Blayney, the invitation of the Whiteheads, but I think we’d better make this a real safari. You know, try out our equipment, take a dozen or so porters—go in for a real workout.”
Blayney nodded. “You’re right. A trip or two done that way and you’ll be ready for anything. Trial and error, in other words.”
“And how about your uncharted lake?” I put in. “When do we start on that trip?”
He looked at me reflectively a moment, then smiled. “When you’ve added up the errors of this trip,” he said. “And don’t forget before you go to sharpen up on your marksmanship.”
The next morning, and every morning before we left, found all three of us up at five o’clock for rifle practice—a bit of preparation for which, later, we were to be very glad.
We left Nairobi for the Ithanga hills in about a week, just before the “short rains.” In addition to Martin, his father, and me, and our personal servants, we added a dozen porters who within a few months were to be the nucleus of a safari company of a hundred and ten men.
It took us only a few hours in our safari Fords to reach Thika, a small settlement at the foot of the hills. Here we were joined by two ox wagons sent on, the night before, with our camp equipment and chop boxes. These wagons were clumsy, springless affairs and might have been patterned after the covered wagons of our own pioneer West. In charge was a noisy, youngish, red-faced Boer who carried a flexible black whip more than thirty feet long which he cracked neatly, constantly, and with apparent relish. But the placid oxen didn’t seem to mind, and their speed at best was fifteen miles a day.
Martin, his father, and I—and Kalowatt, of course—began the slow ascent of the hills in the Fords. The porters plodded alongside, and by early afternoon of our second day we arrived at the cool, comfortable Whitehead bungalow. This lovely home was set in a flower-filled garden and reflected the culture and charm of our host and hostess. They urged us to make their place our headquarters, but, much as we were tempted to accept, we pushed on over increasingly rough roads to a site some four miles to the north.
Leaving Father Johnson to superintend the making of camp, Martin and I, with Jerramani, set out on a preliminary scouting expedition. The peaceful hill country was very like New England, with tall, straight trees and little underbrush.
We hadn’t gone far when we came to a deep ravine which, dark, cool, and mysterious in the setting sun, looked capable of harboring any or all of the animals mentioned by Blayney Percival. Bravely, with Martin in the lead, we descended the steep, rough bank and took up our march along the side but near the bottom. The low sun, cutting lance-like through the trees, picked out the brilliant coloring of rock, flowers, and foliage.
“Isn’t this lovely, Martin!”
I exclaimed, forgetting all about animals.
“Hssssh!” warned Jerramani sharply.
Suddenly, as if they had sprung out of the earth, a herd of buffalo appeared on the opposite bank. They stood in a sort of battle formation and stared at us, their great heads thrust forward and their rope-like tails straight out behind. There must have been thirty of these beasts across the narrow ravine. The sun glistened on their black hides and turned their eyes to blood-red balls of fire.
It took no learned naturalist to see that these powerful brutes would not, like the impalas and Tommies, leap gracefully into the air and run away. An African buffalo is a none-too-friendly-looking animal at best. Its huge bulk stands about five feet at the shoulders; its great curved horns, spreading three to four feet at the points, are mounted on a huge head; and it has a peculiarly diabolical eye set in a protruding ring.
“Martin,” I managed to say, “are they going to come after us?”
“I don’t know,” he said. His voice was just as shaky as mine. He ignored the gun which Jerramani with more than a hint of challenge held out to him. “We’d better get out of here,” he said, and seizing my arm he literally dragged me up the rough side of the ravine. Finally, at the top, we broke into a run and were still running when we reached camp.
Jerramani followed far in the rear at a sad, dignified pace, and his manner showed all too plainly to Ferraragi and the rest of the men that he considered himself a marked man. He who had so proudly boasted of the prowess of Theodore Roosevelt now served a bwana who not only could not shoot, but who also ran away. It was a disgrace not easily to be borne.