I Married Adventure

by Osa Johnson

  Martin and I withdrew to the shelter of our tent.

  “We’ll never run away again, Osa,” he said resolutely.

  “N-no,” I said, though without much conviction.

  Even though we couldn’t be very proud of ourselves as hunters so far, we at least had every right to be proud of our camp. This, our first expedition with full safari equipment, was contrived for efficiency and comfort, and achieved both to a gratifying degree.

  Our sleeping tents had double roofs lined with red cloth to keep out the terrific heat, and there were mosquito nets for our beds and—greatest luxury of all, I think—a roomy canvas tub. The big dining tent was a single, heavy tarpaulin with netting at the sides, and a third tent, also with a double roof, protected our photographic supplies, ammunition, and guns from both heat and rain. Light but sturdy canvas chairs, together with cots made up with good mattresses and bedding, contributed more than comfort, we found—they meant proper rest and steady nerves for our work.

  At a distance from our group of tents the porters were put to work building a grass cook-tent, and grass huts for Jerramani and Ferraragi. Too lazy to build huts themselves, the porters lay around a campfire with only one thin blanket each to protect them from the cold nights. They didn’t seem to mind, however.

  Our complete dining-room equipment of white enamel fitted into a huge bucket and weighed just sixty pounds, the legal weight of a single porter’s load. Mpishi, we found, was cheerful and an excellent cook on safari when he had his two assistants. He made the most of anything supplied him. On this occasion, we had fresh eggs from the Whitehead plantation and vegetables from native gardens to supplement our own canned beef, dried fruits, and coffee. Martin even had his favorite American cigars, which he carried in heat-proof, zinc-lined boxes.

  The headmen and our personal servants received a daily ration of rice, the porters two pounds each of mealy-meal—a coarsely ground dried corn—and all were given meat when their master supplied it. The meat problem was one we were grimly determined to master on this trip.

  Our porters were a picked lot of strong, experienced men. When I first saw them, with their spindly legs, I doubted that they could even lift their sixty-pound loads, much less carry them, but, as it turned out, they could maintain a slow, steady pace with marvelous endurance. If hurried, as was sometimes the case on a forced march, however, they were soon utterly exhausted.

  The Bureau of Native Affairs has laid down very definite rules governing both master and man. Every black employed by a white man is registered at the bureau and must carry a kapandi, or identification card, bearing his fingerprints and description. To desert his master is an offense punishable by imprisonment, unless the native can prove treatment contrary to the regulations. The white employer, on the other hand, is bound to provide each man with a canteen, a blanket, and a daily ration of two pounds of mealy-meal. When there is meat, the porter is given but one pound of mealy. A safari porter is not required to carry more than sixty pounds or to travel more than fifteen miles a day.

  On the morning following our first encounter with the buffalo, we started on a march just as the sun came up. It was a fine, bracing morning, with a touch of the night’s chill in the air. Martin decided to take all of the porters except two, whom he left behind to guard the camp. Father Johnson was right up in the lead, carrying his own .22 rifle.

  We struck straight up into the hills and in about an hour were on the rim of a huge, natural stadium some ten miles across and twenty-five miles long. In every direction we could see game trails, crossing and recrossing like a gigantic crackle. Toward the bottom of the bowl, Jerramani pointed out some rhinoceros spoor and said the big, two-horned animals had been there within the last twenty-four hours.

  “I’d just about as soon see one of them as a lion,” Father Johnson said eagerly.

  “And there’s nothing I’d like better to get in my camera. Which way do you think they went, Jerramani?” Martin asked.

  The rhinos were forgotten, however, when we came on nine buffalo asleep under a tree. I saw Martin’s jaw harden. Quickly he estimated the direction of the wind, then, motioning us all to be as quiet as possible, he led the way with his camera bearer to the lee side of the big animals.

  For a moment I was in complete panic. Here we were, fourteen or fifteen of us, with Martin wholly intent on getting pictures, and Father Johnson and I (he with his little .22) the only ones with guns ready in case of a charge. I think the thing that got me over my panic was my pride in Martin, for he had moved to within a hundred feet of the buffalo, had set up and focused his camera, and with a firm hand was turning the crank. Suddenly the great beasts scrambled to their feet, and it was a bad moment for all of us. Our porters knew what bad shots we were—we all knew. The animals pushed their great heads toward us and pawed the ground, their tails straight out behind them, but Martin kept on grinding.

  “Steady, Osa,” he said, very quietly. “Remember what we said, and if they start coming try to pick off the leader. I think that will head them off.”

  Suddenly I remembered Borneo and the water buffalo—how when they charged I screamed. Whether or not there was a concerted movement of the big black animals toward us now, I don’t know, but I fancied there was, and I screamed, shrill as any train whistle. The beasts looked startled, shook their heads as if it had hurt their ears, and, wheeling, galloped away.

  “Gosh,” was all anybody said, and that was Father Johnson. Martin looked ridiculously nonchalant—I think he even whistled—and it seemed to me that both Jerramani and Ferraragi eyed us with just a hint of respect for having stood our ground. What they thought of my screaming was something else again.

  On our sixth morning in the Ithangas we were in a little donga (valley) that opened out of the bowl, when we sighted a large herd of buffalo.

  “More buffalo,” said Father Johnson disgustedly. “Where are some of the other animals Blayney Percival was telling about—rhinos, leopards, lions?” He tried to tell Jerramani about all the American buffalo he had seen and hides he had hauled when he was a young man, but these two never did understand each other very well, and anyway, Jerramani was trying to get through his head the astonishing directions Martin had just given him. He was to take eight of his men, my husband repeated, move carefully around behind the herd, and drive them straight toward us. There were all of fifty of the big animals in the herd, and the whole idea must have seemed to Jerramani—and undoubtedly was—the ultimate in foolhardiness. I remembered Borneo and the elephants and the tree we climbed. There were no climbable trees just here.

  Martin set up his camera. Ferraragi and I stationed ourselves to cover him. Father Johnson stood ready with his .22. A thicket of brush, none of it big enough to climb or offer much protection, was off to the side, and it was understood that we all would dash there for cover should the buffalo herd appear too intent on running us down.

  “And you remember to scream, Osa,” Martin grinned. “It’s the best ammunition we have.”

  All was ready. We heard Jerramani and the men yelling, and then we heard the buffalo beginning to stampede in our direction. They were coming straight at us. I found myself both pleased and terrified. Martin was turning the crank. They were perhaps two hundred yards off when I heard a crash in the brush just behind us and saw Father Johnson’s face take on a fixed, frozen stare. I whirled. Not thirty feet away, a huge buffalo was coming out of the thicket, head down, straight at us. I fired. Two more appeared. I pulled the trigger as fast as I could, emptied my gun at them, then turned and ran to Martin. When I recovered from my panic, I found that I had killed two of the charging beasts, that the third had run away, and that, fortunately or not, the big herd had veered and thundered off down the valley.

  “Anyhow,” I said, my teeth still chattering, “the meat situation’s taken care of for a few days.”

  Jerramani and Ferraragi were proud and jubilant. Martin’s f
eelings were mixed.

  “I guess we won’t have to worry about this shooting business anymore,” he said, giving me a quick hug, “but why did those three brutes have to bust in just as I was getting pictures of the big herd!”

  “Good girl, Osa,” Father Johnson said, patting me on the back. “You did so good I didn’t have to fire a single shot.”

  We thoroughly enjoyed our first meal of buffalo meat, and our boys, that night, seemed practically hilarious. Around the big campfire were three or four smaller fires, and suspended over each was a gasoline can which served as a common cooking pot. (We found it difficult to keep the men supplied with these cans because they were always letting them boil dry. Promptly, of course, the bottoms would melt out and their food would drop into the fire.) Into this crude pot they put their mealy-meal and water, then added what they considered the choice cuts of the buffalo—the brains, lungs, hooves, and entrails. They waited only until this mess was little more than warmed through, then ate it half raw and saltless. The firmer flesh of the animal was cut into strips and dried on sticks before the fire, and I found that the men carried these bits of hard, blackened meat (biltong) for days and chewed on them the way children, when I was a little girl, chewed on licorice sticks.

  Great men have adventured and explored in British East Africa and left rich and permanent memories. At one time or another we paused at the places where Paul Rainey camped, where Theodore Roosevelt shot his first lion, where Major Dugmore made his first flashlight picture of the king of beasts. The next day after our buffalo kill, we journeyed to Mackenzie Camp, so named for Lady Mackenzie, one of the few women to head an East African safari.

  Just before we reached camp, we found a little group of bright brown bushbucks feeding. Pretty animals, less than three feet high at the shoulders, they had short horns that curved gracefully in the shape of a lyre. Jerramani suggested that they were very good to eat, which rather annoyed us since he and the rest of the men were already as full as ticks with buffalo meat. Martin ignored him and, setting up his camera, made some lovely pictures of the little animals in the cross-lighting of the setting sun.

  Father Johnson seemed to be up to something at a green thicket on the edge of a narrow donga. I didn’t pay much attention to him at first; these were the first bushbucks I had ever seen, and I was thinking I’d love to have one as a pet. Then I heard a curious snarling sound and, turning, saw the elder Johnson poking into the bushes with the barrel of his .22. I took my gun from Ferraragi and ran to him. His eyes blinked rapidly with excitement.

  “What in the world are you doing?” I asked.

  Continuing to poke, he said, “I saw something kind of yellow through the bushes, and I thought maybe it might be a lion.”

  I heard another snarl.

  “Get Martin quickly,” I whispered. “Whatever it is, he’ll want a picture.”

  Father Johnson frowned as if he wished I hadn’t crowded in on his fun, then nodded and sprinted off. I signaled to some of the men to move around to the other side of the donga. Martin picked up his camera, tripod and all, and came running. When he was all set, I moved along perhaps thirty feet to a little open spot in the thicket and had a clear view of Father Johnson’s “lion.”

  It was a big leopard on the low branch of a tree, perhaps fifteen feet back from where Father Johnson had been poking with his gun. Seeing me, he turned to spring in the direction of Martin, so I raised my gun and fired. He leaped from the tree and ran out of the thicket directly toward the camera. Halfway there he crouched snarling under a small thorn tree, and I saw blood running down his flank. Either I had made a mis-shot or the bullet ricocheted. In a panic for Martin’s safety, I fired again; the leopard stiffened and fell.

  I don’t know when I’ve seen Martin so angry.

  “What did you have to go and spoil my picture for?” he shouted. “Couldn’t you have waited? We’ll never get any pictures if that’s what you’re going to do all the time!”

  The men sang and danced with joy. The bwana and bibi (mistress) were becoming real hunters, and, as it turned out, Father Johnson’s “lion” proved to be the finest leopard ever taken by us in Africa.

  * * *

  —

  “Well, see here,” Blayney Percival said, plainly puzzled. “I didn’t expect you two back from the Ithanga hills just yet. Didn’t you like it up there?”

  “We ran out of salt,” I said brightly. “Can you imagine me? I didn’t put enough in the chop boxes, and for three days the food was so tasteless and horrid we just couldn’t stand it.”

  “But I’m sure the Whiteheads would have helped you out with some—”

  Martin laughed. “We could have got salt easily enough—just made it an excuse to come back.” He was completely serious now. “We’ve put your trial-and-error system to a pretty good test, Blayney, and feel we’d like to push on to that uncharted lake without wasting any more time.”

  The game warden shook his head slightly. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” he said. “For all I know, my uncharted lake, so-called, is nothing but a phantom lake.”

  “Man alive,” Martin said explosively, “you don’t think we mind taking chances, do you? Why, that’s all Osa and I have ever done.”

  The result of this chat was a compromise: Martin and I went with Blayney Percival for a brief trip through the Southern Game Reserve, where elephants were said to be in migration, and where he said we would see an interesting variety of animals, if nothing else.

  Part of the reserve, we found, lay on a shadeless plain. Again I was reminded of the Dakotas and the wide, flat lands of Texas. Here, however, instead of domestic cattle, we saw herds of zebra, antelope, wildebeeste, and eland, and, similar to the bleached skulls of our American bison, the skeletons of rhinos wantonly slaughtered by soldiers during the war. Next we passed through a wooded section covered sparsely with mimosa and acacia, and a little later we reached the dry bed of the Ol’ Garai River.

  Following this for a time in search of a suitable campsite—we had brought forty porters with us on this trip—we ran onto elephant tracks. Blayney said they were not more than twenty-four hours old. Luck was with us, we decided, and felt very gay. Too gay, in fact, for when Blayney in the most casual manner possible said something about this being a good section for warthog, and that he’d enjoy some fresh pork, Martin and I picked up our guns and thought we’d show off a bit. While the boys were pitching camp, we’d go pick off a warthog, just like that.

  Two hours later—it was nearly dark—we returned, empty-handed. To our astonishment, just outside Mpishi’s tent, there hung one, all neatly skinned, cleaned, and ready for cooking. He too, it seemed, had heard Mr. Percival’s lightly expressed wish for a bit of pork and, armed with a hatchet, had strolled down the dry river to a spot perhaps three hundred yards distant where the verdure suggested the presence of a small swamp. A swamp there was, and a warthog in it. Mpishi threw the hatchet, tomahawk fashion, and fresh pork, deliciously cooked, was served for dinner that night.

  It was no sooner dark than all about us lions began roaring. Somehow it had never occurred to me that there would be so many in one place, not even in Africa. I hoped I didn’t look as nervous as I felt, but at any rate Blayney tried to reassure me and said there weren’t really very many, that it just sounded that way because they were circling us from curiosity, trying to figure us out.

  Tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep for their racket, and after a while I began to identify them by their roars. One had a particularly deep, long-drawn, sepulchral tone of which I’m sure he was very proud. It had a rain-barrel quality that was magnificent and spine-chilling, and I visualized him as a great, tawny beast sporting a fine, heavy mane and surrounded by a coterie of admiring lionesses. Perhaps he was even putting up a bluff of protecting them from some danger which they as mere females were incapable of combating or understanding. With this bit of whimsy I got ove
r the uncomfortable feeling that I was a sort of female Daniel. Martin had long since fallen asleep, and, not to be outdone in either bravery or bravado, I composed myself and followed suit.

  From dawn to dark the next day we followed the tracks of the elephants is a winding trail that crossed and recrossed the dry river bed. This carried us deeper into the interior, and we passed through countless herds of animals. On this trip we saw the largest single herd of giraffe we had yet seen. There were thirty-seven of these awkward, strange-looking beasts. Martin set up his camera, but they caught our scent and were off, making excellent speed in spite of an odd gait that seemed about to trip them at every step. Martin succeeded with his telephoto lens in getting one fine shot of them against the sky as they disappeared over the crown of a hill, and this alone, he said later when he had developed it, was worth the whole trip into the Southern Reserve.

  The elephant trail took us finally into deep bush country, and the natives in a village there shook their heads when we expressed our hope of catching up with the big herd.

  “A week ago,” they said—Blayney interpreted for us—“you could not count the elephants here, there were so many, but now they have gone back to the mountains and will not return until the next rains.”

  We gave up our elephant hunt.

  Scientists and hunters, most of whom have spent much time in Africa and know a lot about elephants, cannot agree on the migration question. Some believe that years ago, before civilization restricted their movements, the great herds were in constant migration, and that today the old habit persists and keeps them moving, sometimes seeking shelter from rain and winds, or keeping a rendezvous during the breeding season, or merely following an instinctive urge for change. Others, equally wise in the ways of elephants, say that the big animals live and die within a comparatively restricted area.

  On our way back to Nairobi, we had rare luck in securing some fine pictures of eland, the largest species of the antelope family, which fast is disappearing under the gun of the ruthless hunter. Blayney Percival said this was the biggest herd he had seen in recent years, and he doubted that we would ever again see so many, all in one group. Beautiful creatures with widespread horns and sleek, fawn-colored coats shading to gray under their bellies, they are valued as trophies above any of their kind. This, together with the fact that their meat is sweet and tender, probably accounts for their slaughter.