09 Lion Adventure

by Willard Price

  Hal, leaping about to keep clear of the lion’s claws, did not dare to shoot again for fear of hitting his brother. He finally got the muzzle close to the lion’s head. Then a great paw, more powerful than any baseball bat, the paw that could knock a zebra dead with one slap, struck the barrel and bent it into a V.

  If Hal had fired at that instant, the gun would have exploded, killing all three, and that would have been the end of the story.

  He took his finger off the trigger. As the lion lunged for him, jaws agape, he jammed the bent barrel down the beast’s throat.

  The lion fell over and clawed at the gun with his hind paws. He rolled about on the ground. He rid himself of the gun barrel but he got something else.

  Ants.

  He stood up and shook himself. He bit at his flanks and pawed his ears and throat. He dashed about the boma. He had forgotten the boys.

  The ants that had tortured them promptly left them to attack their new victim. They were large for ants, almost an inch long, and had jaws like pincers.

  Attacking by the thousands, they could strip an animal to the bone. They entered the throat, the eyes, the ears. One of the smallest of creatures was conquering the king of beasts.

  The lion leaped out of the boma and dived into the dark. They heard him plunge into a near-by water-hole.

  Roger picked up the torch and they looked themselves over. Their faces, arms, clothes, were smeared with blood. But they couldn’t find where the blood came from. They had many scratches, but none deep enough to produce all this gore.

  Hal breathed a sigh of relief. ‘It’s the lion’s blood, not ours. I thought I missed, but I must have creased his skull.’

  ‘Well, let’s get out of here,’ said Roger. ‘I’ve had enough for tonight.’

  ‘You know better than that.’

  Roger did know better. He knew that when a hunter wounds a wild animal he must follow it and finish it off. He knew that a badly hurt animal cannot be allowed to go loose. It must be tracked down and put out of its pain. There is another reason. A savage beast after being wounded is far more savage than before. It would revenge itself upon the first human being it could find.

  ‘We’ll go after it in the morning,’ Roger said.

  ‘We’ll go after it now. It could be fifty miles away by morning.’

  ‘But your gun is busted.’

  ‘We still have the spear. Come along. But first, those scratches.’ He took a tube of penicillin out of his bush jacket pocket.

  ‘Why fool with them now? They are not bad.’

  ‘Just a little scratch from a lion’s claw could kill you. Blood poisoning. Lions don’t manicure their nails. They are really pretty clean animals - lick themselves all over just like a cat. But they can’t get under the nails. Scraps of meat get under them and rot and become poisonous. One fellow I knew who got a light scratch from a lion’s claw spent the next six months in the hospital. He was lucky. He lived.’

  Hal rubbed a little of the ointment into Roger’s scratches, then into his own.

  ‘That ought to do it. Let’s go.’

  ‘How about the other lions?’ Roger said. He picked up the torch and played it on the goat, or the place where the goat had been. It was gone, and so were the lions.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to worry about them.’

  ‘We can’t be sure of that. They may be lying near by, digesting their meal. Perhaps they’re all around us. If we bump into one of them, we’re in trouble. They may be harmless old pussycats if they’re let alone, but they don’t like to be stepped on.’

  He took the spear and pushed the thorns aside at the point where the man-eater had leaped over the wall. He stepped through and Roger followed, carrying the torch.

  There were deep gouges in the ground where the Hon had landed. Then he had made straight for the water-hole, leaving a trail of blood. The boys followed warily, watching every rock to be sure it was a rock and not a lion. Sleepy growls came from the bushes. At the edge of the water-hole three lions that had been drinking looked into the light.

  ‘Steady,’ whispered Hal. ‘No sudden moves.’

  It was important to show no sign of fear. Even a well-behaved lion can’t resist the temptation to chase a man who runs.

  ‘Walk backwards,’ Hal whispered.

  Still facing the animals, they stepped slowly backwards along the edge of the pool. They took their time about it. If they tripped on a root or a hummock and fell the chances were good that they would not be allowed to get up again.

  Hal felt he was getting cross-eyed, trying to watch the lions and at the same time watch the ground to see where the man-eater had come out of the pool. There was no use looking for footprints. The prints of lions’ feet were everywhere.

  They had gone halfway around the water-hole before he saw what he was looking for - pebbles stained with red, and a blood trail leading off into the jungle.

  This was going to be worse than he had expected. The lion had not stayed in the open, but had crawled off into the underbrush. It might be hiding behind any bush, with an aching head and a heart full of hate. If it heard and smelled hunters approaching, it would brace itself for a spring. Lions had been known to leap twelve feet high and span a distance of forty-five feet in one jump. This one wouldn’t need to do as well. Bushes pressed close on both sides-if the lion were lurking behind one he might reach his enemies with a spring of only ten feet or less.

  Roger stepped on a log. It rolled, dropping him on his back, then came up on four legs and made off.

  ‘Watch your step!’ Hal said angrily as Roger picked himself up. ‘Lucky that wasn’t the one we’re looking for.’

  ‘Perhaps it was,’ admitted Roger.

  ‘Not a chance. He wouldn’t have let you off so easily. Besides, the blood trail shows he didn’t stop here.’

  They followed the red-stained bushes a little farther.

  Then Hal stopped.

  ‘Shine that torch down here - close.’

  He examined every leaf, every twig. No sign of blood. Perhaps the wound had stopped bleeding. But that was not likely. It was more probable that the lion was right here, somewhere, behind these bushes.

  He approached a bush cautiously, trying to peer through it or around it.

  ‘Look out,’ cried Roger. ‘Behind you.’

  Hal wheeled around. He braced himself for the lion’s spring. But lions seldom do what is expected of them. There was no spring.

  A pair of great yellow coals burned in the bush. Above them was a shaggy head matted with blood.

  The beast was flat on the ground. He crept forward inch by inch. He did not roar, he did not cough. He purred.

  It was not a friendly, catty purr. It was a dreadful thing to hear, full of anger and revenge, and it seemed to come not just from the throat but from the whole furious beast. It was like the rumbling before an earthquake.

  ‘Give me that spear,’ Roger said.

  ‘No, I’ll use it. You get back out of the way.’

  ‘Give it to me,’ insisted Roger. ‘They showed me how to use it.’

  ‘You’re not strong enough.’

  ‘It doesn’t take strength.’ He yanked it out of Hal’s hand. ‘You hold the light.’

  There was no time to argue. Hal held the light. He realized with a jolt that this youngster was growing up. In ten seconds he would either be dead or he would be a man. It was Masai custom - no Masai youth was considered a man until he had killed a lion.

  Roger was already regretting his burst of courage.

  Those glaring yellow eyes, the tail erect and as stiff as a gun barrel, the deep deadly purr, brought the sweat out in beads on Roger’s forehead. He clenched his teeth. He tried to quiet Ms fluttering nerves.

  He was big and strong for his age—yet he knew better than to trust his own strength. He called on Mother Earth to help him. Instead of hurling the spear, he planted the butt firmly in the ground. He pointed the blade directly towards the lion’s chest. He he
ld it in that position as steadily as his dancing nerves would permit.

  The final charge of a lion comes like a bolt of lightning.. By comparison, a charge of an elephant or rhino or hippo or even a buffalo is slow motion.

  At one instant Roger was watching a creeping animal still a good ten feet away. At the next instant it was

  coming out of the bush like a bullet, but a bullet with five hundred pounds behind it.

  But behind the spear was the whole weight of Mother Earth. The point penetrated the chest. The great jaws jerked down, gripped the shaft, pulled it out, and snapped it as if it had been bamboo. With a roar of rage and pain, the man-eater fell on his side, struggled to get up, fell again, and lay still.

  Roger felt suddenly very young. He sat down weakly and mopped his face. Hal put his hand on the boy’s trembling shoulder. He tried to speak - but the words wouldn’t come.

  Words were not necessary. They both knew what that touch on the shoulder meant - not the comfort given by a man to a child, but the respect of a man for a man.

  Chapter 4

  The man-eaters of Tsavo

  Hal and Roger were not happy about it. They had not wanted to kill the animal - it was just a job that had to be done.

  Someone else was not happy. King Ku.

  1 don’t believe it,’ he growled when Tanga, the station master, told him the news. Two boys - alone? Their crew must have helped them. I thought I gave orders…’

  ‘Your orders were obeyed,’ Tanga said. ‘The boys did it alone.’

  ‘Were they hurt?’

  The lion mauled them.’

  King Ku’s eyes brightened. ‘Ah, that is too bad. Are they in the hospital? Will they live?’

  They will live - they did not need to go to the hospital.’

  ‘But you say they were hurt. Soon they will find-poison in their blood and they will die. It is very sad.’

  They treated the wounds with the white man’s strong stuff. They will not die.’

  King Ku’s dark face seemed to become darker. ‘We’ll see about that.’ Then, noticing the puzzled look on Tanga’s face, he added, ‘I mean, we’ll see that they are protected. 111 order my medicine man to cast a spell over them. Tell them to have no fear of claws or teeth. No harm can come to them. You will tell them?’

  ‘I will tell them.’

  He did. In the dingy little railway station the boys listened to Tanga’s assurance that King Ku would take care of them.

  Then, leaving Tanga at his desk, they went out to walk up and down the railway platform and wonder what it all meant.

  ‘Why is Ku so anxious to have us think we can’t be hurt?’ puzzled Hal. ‘Is he trying to throw us off guard? Does he want us to take chances so we will be hurt? What can that old geezer have against us?’

  ‘He looks savage enough to be capable of most anything,’ Roger said. ‘And Tanga - you know he was the one who got us into this. Do you suppose the two of them are trying to do us in?’

  ‘Tanga seems such a good guy.’ Hal said. ‘Always smiling.’

  ‘I know. But smiles don’t mean much. You know what Hamlet said - about how a fellow can “smile, and smile, and be a villain”.’

  ‘Well,’ Hal said, ‘I’m not going to worry myself sick about it. Let’s go get a little shut-eye to make up for last flight.’

  In their tent which had been pitched close to the railway track they tossed restlessly on their cots.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ Roger said, ‘is how all this man-eating got started. Why is it so bad here?’

  ‘You’ve heard of “the man-eaters of Tsavo”?’

  ‘It sort of rings a bell. What’s the story?’

  ‘It happened right here. A couple of thousand men were building this stretch of railway. Their boss was a construction engineer named Colonel Patterson.

  ‘Some of the men got sick and died. Colonel Patterson ordered several men to bury the dead, and paid them extra for digging the graves. The men took the money, but they were too lazy to dig graves. They just hid the corpses in the bushes.

  ‘Game was scarce that year and the lions were hungry. Two of them found the bodies and ate them. That gave them a taste for human flesh. More men died and were eaten. The lions came every night. One night they found no corpses - so they broke into a tent, dragged out two men, killed them, and ate them.’

  Roger sat bolt upright. ‘You mean they came straight into a tent - a tent like this?’ ‘Exactly like this. And they kept coming every night.’ ‘But didn’t this Colonel Patterson do anything about it?’

  ‘He tried. But remember, he was an engineer, not a hunter. He had plenty of courage, but he didn’t quite know how to go about it. He would sit up in a tree with a gun near the spot where a man had been killed the night before. The lions had too much sense to go there again. They would attack somewhere else.’

  ‘One night he sat up on a branch above the body of a man who had just died. Having been up every night, the colonel was very tired. He went to sleep. A growl below disturbed him. he moved a little, and fell plop on to a lion. Luckily the lion was so startled that it ran off into the bush.’

  ‘The colonel built a lion trap. It was a big box made out of wood and iron and the door was fixed so it would close and lock if a spring in the floor was stepped on. At the back of the box he fenced off a small room and put a couple of men in it. They were safe behind bars. The idea was that the lion would come into the cage after the men and would step on the spring and lock himself in.’

  ‘One of the man-eaters did walk into the trap, stepped on the spring, and the door snapped shut. The lion roared and woke the camp. The colonel and four of his men with rifles came running and fired twenty bullets into the cage. They couldn’t see very well - they missed the lion but one of their bullets broke the latch, the door swung open, and the lion escaped.’

  ‘The colonel tried tin pans. He had his men surround a man-eater where it lay in the brush. Each man was armed with several tin pans. A passage was left open for the lion to escape. There the colonel posted himself so that he could pot the lion when it came out of the brush.

  ‘When he was all ready the men beat their tin pans together and the frightened lion came running through the brush. The colonel pulled the trigger but the gun only clicked. A misfire. Before he could use the other barrel the lion got away.’

  ‘The colonel didn’t get much help from his men because they believed the lions were really devils and could not be killed.’

  The lions did show devilish intelligence. The colonel had strychnine put in the corpses of two men and laid them out in the bush. The lions were heard prowling about during the night but in the morning the bodies were still there, untouched. But two more men were missing from the camp.’

  ‘More than a thousand of the men went on strike. They leaped on a train bound for Mombasa.

  The men who were left built shelters for themselves up on tanks or roofs or in trees. Some dug pits under their tents, covered the pits with logs, and slept down in the hole. Surely there they would be safe. But the lions pulled aside the logs, leaped down into the pits, and dragged out the men.’

  ‘They didn’t take the trouble to pull them off into the brush but ate them just outside the tents in spite of a hail of bullets.’

  ‘So many men climbed one tree that it fell on a man-eater, pinning him to the ground, but before they could call the colonel with his gun the lion wriggled loose and disappeared.’

  ‘Two experienced hunters came down from Nairobi. They had shot plenty of lions and were sure they could get these two devils. As soon as they stepped from the train a lion leaped upon one of them, knocked him down, and proceeded to eat him. When the other hunter attempted to interfere the lion jumped on his back and ripped it to shreds. The hunter was taken to the hospital. He never did shoot that lion.’

  ‘One night a dead donkey was put out where the lions could easily get at it. The colonel had a hunting platform —they call it a machan - put up about
ten feet from the body. The machan was twelve feet high and consisted of four poles stuck into the ground and supporting a plank that served as a seat.’

  ‘The colonel perched up on this seat, gun in hand. A little after midnight he heard a sigh - a lion often sighs when he is hungry. The rustling in the dark told the colonel that the beast was close to the donkey. The colonel tried to keep quiet - but as he raised his gun it bumped against the plank and the lion at once left the donkey and began circling around the man.’

  ‘For two hours the horrified colonel heard the beast creeping round and round in the darkness, gradually coming closer. At any moment he expected the lion to rush the machan and perhaps break one of the flimsy poles and bring the whole thing to the ground.’

  ‘Suddenly something came flop against the back of the colonel’s head. He was so terrified that he nearly fell off the plank. He thought the lion had leaped upon him from behind. Then he realized it had only been an owl which had perhaps mistaken him for the branch of a tree.

  His sudden movement when the owl struck him made the plank creak. The lion heard the sound and came growling up to the machan. There was just enough dawn light so that Colonel Patterson could see the dark form against the whitish undergrowth.’

  ‘He took careful aim and fired. The lion let out a terrific roar and began leaping about in all directions. The roars died down to groans and the groans to deep sighs - then nothing.’

  ‘Men from the camp a quarter of a mile away came running and when they saw that the “devil” was dead they beat tom-toms and blew horns and threw themselves down on the ground before Colonel Patterson crying, “Mabarak! Mabarak!” It means “Blessed One” or “Saviour”. They were sure the colonel must be some sort of god to have conquered this devil.’