I Married Adventure

by Osa Johnson

  Not wishing to admit it, Father Johnson was nevertheless just a little stiff and tired after our unsuccessful lion hunt. More, he was actually skeptical by now whether there were any lions in Africa.

  “Maybe they’re getting extinct or something,” he said gloomily the next morning in camp as we sat having breakfast. His back was stiff, and Martin was rubbing it for him.

  “Remember,” he went on, wincing a bit as Martin struck a tender place, “we’ve covered a lot of territory.”

  We decided on one more hunt before we left Isiolo. We simply couldn’t led Dad down, so once more we set out on mules. Dr. Macdonough joined us on this trip together with his gun-bearer, and I heard Father Johnson boasting to him as they jogged along together that we had just as fierce animals in America as they ever hoped to have in Africa.

  “Why,” he said, “just a plain ordinary domestic bull is fiercer than anything I’ve seen so far in these parts, and you ought to see our bears and wild cats and panthers—yes, and a kind of lion, too. We call it a mountain lion.”

  “Yes,” acknowledged Dr. Macdonough politely, “I understand that America is a very wonderful country.”

  “You’re darned right,” punctuated Father Johnson.

  We stopped for lunch beside a small donga, and here, as luck would have it, Dr. Macdonough’s gun-bearer stirred up a rhino that was taking a nap in a thicket. It charged straight out toward us and we all dashed behind trees. The big, horned beast stood there and seemed to consider a moment; he even looked inclined to go and find another shady spot and finish his nap. Suddenly I saw Father Johnson craning his neck for a better view of the big fellow. Some brush screened his vision and apparently he decided on a better vantage point, a tree some thirty feet distant.

  He sprinted for it. The rhino saw him and was off in pursuit. Dad and the rhino got to the tree at about the same time. Dad skinned around it, the rhino after him. Around and around they went and each had the appearance of chasing the other. I was terrified. I didn’t dare raise my gun to shoot, for with one right on the other’s heels, I was just as likely to hit Dad as to hit the rhino. I glanced at Martin; he was white and completely frozen.

  Then I watched Major Pedler raise his gun and take careful aim. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them until after the shot had been fired, but the rhino was down, and then what I saw—to my complete astonishment—was Father Johnson coming toward us in a positive rage.

  “Who went and shot him?” he demanded accusingly. “I could have outrun him—and shot him too if you’d just given me time!”

  Chapter 20

  “Well, I suppose there’s something about every job that a man doesn’t like,” Martin said. He had just shot a fine Grant’s gazelle.

  I nodded, and, with Dr. Macdonough and Father Johnson, we stood looking down at the lovely animal.

  “It’s an exceptionally fine specimen,” the doctor said, “and I don’t think that in all the years I’ve been in Africa I’ve seen one with longer or more nearly perfect horns.”

  My husband pumped the empty shell from his gun. “At that,” he said with a touch of morbid whimsy, “I suppose the poor fellow would just as soon be in belly of a native as in the belly of a lion.”

  “Lion!” snorted Father Johnson.

  This was to be our last hunting trip out of Isiolo. In a few days we were moving on to Rattray’s, just seven miles up the Isiolo River, and there we would say good-bye to Dad as we pushed northward into increasingly rough country. We had made three trips hoping to find lions. Martin wanted to photograph lions just as badly as Father Johnson wanted to see them. But so far, we’d had no luck.

  On our way down a slope overlooking the plains, Jerramani stopped suddenly and pointed off. We halted our mules—and there, perhaps four hundred yards away, with the low sun highlighting their tawny backs, were six lions, two males and four lionesses, running in single file toward the herd of Grant’s gazelle out of which Martin shortly before had picked his fine specimen.

  “Lions, Father Johnson. Look!” I squeaked in my excitement.

  The elder Johnson squinted off, frankly skeptical.

  “You mean those six animals over there?” He shook his head. “Couldn’t be—not six lions. Must be something else.”

  I pushed the binoculars into his hands. They were powerful glasses that I knew would bring the big cats up almost into his lap.

  Father Johnson sighed happily; his smile was positively ineffable. “Lions,” he said. “Six lions, running one right behind the other.”

  That night the meat of the gazelle found its way quickly into the cooking pots of the natives, and the skin and horns were put on the roof of the grass cook-house to dry. Japanda, our strange, gnome-like little skinner, engaged especially for this trip, twittered happily as he worked on the fine pelt, and went to great pains to stretch it carefully. Martin made a gift of both skin and horn to Father Johnson, who was to take them back with him to Nairobi and ship them from there to Independence.

  We had reckoned, however, without Africa’s hijacker, the hyena. With the coming of morning we found our trophies gone, both pelt and horns, and except for the clear tracks just below that slope of the roof where the skin had been stretched, we might have cast our suspicions in other and wholly wrong directions. Nevertheless, an element of mystery continued to surround the incident, for our porters, a hundred of them, had slept on the ground that night so close about the cook-house that to pick one’s way among them, however carefully, would have been practically impossible.

  Both Martin and I developed what amounted to positive loathing for the hyena. He is an ugly, sneaking coward and apparently knows it, for he slinks along on his yellow belly with his tail between his legs and with never a show of spirit or clean, honest fight. A pack of hyenas will attack the weak or wounded, the newborn or feeble, and apparently kill for the sake of killing.

  The scavengers of the animal kingdom, they will follow a lion or leopard and finish what is left of the kill. As a matter of fact, there’s nothing they won’t eat, for we’ve had them steal from us leather boots, jackets, and even the leather upholstery of our cars.

  “Worse than coyotes,” Father Johnson said.

  Mr. Rattray, a man of squarish build and firm expression and perhaps fifty years of age, turned out to be one of those people who do strange things in the out-of-the-way places of the world. His hobby was breaking Grevy zebra to harness. They were immune to the tsetse fly, he said, and the feeding problem was simple, because they could live on the dry, sparse vegetation of the plains. The sight of them pulling a plow seemed to fascinate Father Johnson.

  “I keep looking for the rest of the circus,” he said, chuckling.

  “What circus?” Mr. Rattray asked. He was quite literal-minded.

  Father Johnson tried several approaches. He had imagined there just wasn’t anybody in the world he couldn’t be right friendly with in no time at all, but here, apparently, was a man of different fiber from just plain folk. He decided that his encounter with the rhino—being a distinctly local event—might arouse Mr. Rattray’s interest. As a matter of fact, he was frankly pleased to have been the hero of so narrow an escape.

  He awaited a favorable moment following a meal which Mpishi and I had cooked. Mr. Rattray seemed in an almost mellow mood, so Dad told him all about his rhino. Mr. Rattray listened attentively enough—almost too attentively for Dad’s comfort. In addition, however, he looked bored. Dad was plainly exasperated.

  “Well,” he said, “a man doesn’t get chased by a rhino every day, does he?”

  Mr. Rattray took his pipe from his mouth. “No, why should he?” he replied.

  This left Father Johnson out on a limb, and Martin moved in to the rescue.

  “Certainly is a nice place you have here,” he said. “Orderly—really marvelous.”

  Our host squinted at him as if about to speak but
changed his mind.

  If Blayney Percival’s calculations were correct, Rattray’s place lay just about halfway between Nairobi and that part of the Abyssinian border near which we hoped to find the uncharted lake. Martin sounded out Rattray to see if he had ever heard of such a lake, but the mere suggestion was met with an impatient snort. Fiction, he called it. Nothing up that way but the Kaisoot Desert and beyond that a big, barren, saltwater lake that extended right across the border into Abyssinia. He thought the name was Rudolf.

  From that point on it was simple for Rattray to reach the decision that somebody had glimpsed the south tip of Rudolf at some time or another and jumped to the conclusion that they had made a discovery. Indeed, he was so emphatic about it—loose thinking or loose talking of any sort were his particular aversion—that he had us almost persuaded against continuing the long and hazardous trek north.

  “If it’s pictures of animals you want,” he said, “you’ll find them in abundance up in the Shaba hills: elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion, and even the reticulated northern giraffe.”

  Martin and I talked this over. The Shaba hills were a little off our course, but we might be wise to spend a few weeks there, get a few thousand feet of good animal pictures, and send them back to Rattray’s for shipment to the United States. Neither of us voiced the doubts that were to haunt us from that day forth, nor did either of us suggest abandoning our original plan. Martin referred to it just once.

  “I don’t care what anybody says,” he declared. “Blayney Percival is no fool.”

  * * *

  —

  The memory of our camp in the Shaba hills will always bring back mixed memories. It was one of the most beautiful and rewarding campsites we ever had, but the trip there…

  We had gone but a few miles toward the hills when we found ourselves on the edge of a great river of lava. “I guess I must have been crazy to let you come on this trip,” Martin said. The country seemed to grow rougher at every step. Scattered bits of volcanic slag cut our shoes.

  He stopped abruptly and turned me toward him.

  “Won’t you please go back?” he pleaded.

  I was both angry and ashamed of being angry, as I realized his concern for me.

  We had gone on for probably another mile, and still, stretching as far as we could see, was lava, smooth and slippery in places, sharp and jagged as broken glass in others.

  “I’ll send Ferraragi back with you and half a dozen of the men,” my husband urged. “Go back to Rattray’s. He’ll take you in to Nairobi—maybe Dad’s still there, and you can go in with him.”

  All I did was to shake my head. He looked at me a moment, then sighed and turned to the men, ordering a halt. Then followed a consultation with our headmen in which Martin said he thought it would be better to find a way, if possible, around the volcanic field rather than to attempt to cross it. Jerramani and Ferraragi talked this over together, then discussed it with the men, but they all voted otherwise, saying they would rather go the shorter way, across it.

  Reluctantly Martin yielded, but he insisted that the men rest until some of the sun’s heat had gone out of the slag. The day’s fifteen miles being still uncompleted, the porters balked a little; change in routine always troubled them. Martin also ordered that the men fill their canteens at the stream about half a mile distant. His next concern was the feet of the Meru porters. They had no sandals, never wore them, and were astonished, apparently, when my husband examined their horny soles. Their own headman saw no cause for concern, so Martin decided he was worrying unnecessarily and we sat down to rest, ate a light meal, and waited for the sun to go down.

  The stars were shining when my husband, with some misgivings, gave the word to start across the rough slag, and the men, picking their way skillfully, swung into a singing, noisy line. At the end of the fifteen miles, however, they drew to a halt, and the sun was up before they could be induced to move on again. The lava soon was blistering hot with the sun on it, and the air had a searing intensity.

  Only once before in my life can I remember torture that even approximated what followed, and that was on the island of Malekula, when the natives put their guns to our backs and drove us up the mountainside. My skin burned, my eyeballs ached, and there was a drum-like pounding in my head which I seemed able to endure only when, by some curious quirk, I kept pace with it.

  Slowly my thick boots were being cut to ribbons. I looked at Martin’s; they too were cut. I looked up at his face and knew that this was just as horrible for him as it was for me. It was worse, because he had the worry of his cameras, chemicals, and film, and the worry of the men as to whether they could keep going under their burdens of sixty pounds each. And, too, he had the worry of me. I should have done as he asked and gone back. His face was flushed and wet, and a pulse beat hard in his throat. He smiled. “You’re doing fine,” was all he said. No reproaches—confident that I wouldn’t let him down.

  Shortly after noon, he called a short rest and looked the men over. He was shocked to find their lips swollen with thirst and to learn that they had not filled their canteens. The order which Jerramani had passed on to the headman of the Merus had been airily dismissed as a vagary of the white ’mbwana.

  At the end of another hour of pushing ahead, Jerramani came to report to us that some of the men were dropping out of line. I saw Martin’s mouth tighten as he looked back over the wretched natives, and then he gave an order which I knew was the most difficult he had ever issued—to use a whip if necessary to keep them on their feet. Left behind, death of thirst on the searing rocks would be a matter of only a few hours.

  It was about four-thirty when Jerramani, desperate this time, came up to us where we led the straggling procession and told us the Meru porters were throwing down their loads. We went back along the line and found most of them sobbing, some of them apparently half out of their minds, others in a half stupor, dropping face down on the slag.

  Nightmare seemed added to nightmare. Martin was now confronted with either lashing the men unmercifully and forcing them on, or letting them proceed without their loads. He chose the latter course, sending Ferraragi on ahead with them while we stopped and, with the help of Jerramani and five of our men, gathered our stuff into a compact pile and built a rough barricade of rocks around it.

  We soon caught up with and passed the wretched Merus, and in something like an hour we came to the end of the slag. A sandy stretch dotted with thorn trees lay ahead of us. The Merus straggled in and stumbled from the hot, rough lava onto the sand with crazy shouts of relief, only to find that the tiny particles dug into their bleeding feet and gave pain greater than before.

  Kalowatt, in her comfortable, airy, carrying case and with a porter assigned especially to her, apparently had not suffered at all on the tortuous journey. On the contrary, she was ready for a frolic the moment she saw me and scolded lustily when I merely pushed a banana into her box and let it go at that.

  Martin picked three of our best men and set off across the valley in search of water. He refused to let me go with him, and this time I heeded his wish. I must have fallen asleep in the hot sand, for I awoke to find Jerramani beside me; he had brought my cot from our cache.

  My husband and I had decided on a signal of three shots in quick succession in the event that he found water, and it seemed to me that I listened for these even as I slept. But for hours on end there was nothing to be heard except the moans of the poor Merus, the occasional hollow roar of a lion, or the nearer dry cough of a leopard.

  When Martin’s signal finally came, I was too deep in sleep to hear it. Morning was just breaking, and I was awakened by the almost hysterical shouts of the Merus as, heedless of their swollen feet, they stumbled off in the direction of the shots. I followed with our own men and, guided by the shots which Martin continued to fire at intervals, found him a little over a mile from camp.

  His eyes were red-rimmed and
strained. We said little, but his smile made me very glad that I had not gone back to Rattray’s, and I was glad again when I was able to help him establish a temporary camp at the water hole and direct the doctoring of the porters’ feet. Next came the retrieving of our supplies and checking of cameras, chemicals, and film. My husband allowed himself no rest until this was done, and I think I awaited the verdict as anxiously as one might await word from an operating room of a loved one. His smile again was all I needed. I knew everything was all right, and then out of sheer relief, I suppose, I began to boss him.

  “You go and get into bed this very minute,” I stormed.

  “Why should I go to bed?” he demanded irritably. “It’s broad daylight!”

  “Yes, and look at you,” I scolded, quite as if it was his fault. “Eyes way back in your head, lips cracked. You’ll be down sick next thing you know, and then what’ll we do?”

  I had pushed him into our tent by now, and while I took off one gashed and mutilated boot, Aloni took off the other. Finding that his feet had been bleeding, I sent Aloni for water and an antiseptic. While we bathed Martin’s feet he carried on hilariously.

  “I feel wonderful,” he mumbled. “Never felt better in my life.” He dropped back on his pillow. “Everything’s fine,” he repeated over and over. “Photograph stuffs all right; everything’s all right!”

  He slept the clock around.

  * * *

  —

  We set up camp in the Shaba hills. Martin insisted that the porters build grass huts for themselves, and that they place them in orderly rows, and these, together with our cook-house, storage-house, and our own tents, made a cozy little village. A strong barricade of thornbush was built around it, on advice of Jerramani, to keep out the lions, leopards, and thieving hyenas, and, altogether, nothing could have been more comfortable. Martin and I regretted that Father Johnson was not with us to enjoy it. We missed him frightfully.