09 Lion Adventure

by Willard Price

  Standing on one foot may be natural for a stork but a man cannot do it for long. Especially if he’s in pain, and weak from lack of food.

  The hyenas did not slink away, nor did they come closer. They continued to sit in a circle about ten feet off. A little ripple of laughter went round the circle -but the laugh of the ‘laughing hyena’ is not merry. It is so evil that it chills the blood.

  Hal stuck it out for perhaps a quarter of an hour, then he slumped to the ground. A low growl went around the circle. The animals stood up, and one or two of the bravest, or hungriest, pressed in a little closer.

  Hal wished fervently that he had something more deadly than his knife. However, he drew it from its sheath and prepared to defend himself. One hyena coming too near received a kick from Hal’s good foot and ran away howling, but he immediately returned.

  Hal swung the bush-jacket around his head. Each animal stepped back to let it pass and then pushed in a little closer. They were not to be kept from their dinner by a bush-jacket.

  As he felt the hot breath of the animals on his face he realized it was time to use his knife. He plunged it into the neck of the nearest animal and the beast laughed as it died.

  Immediately the other hyenas leaped upon their dead companion and tore him limb from limb and devoured the flesh before it turned cold. They did not pick the bones - instead, they crushed them to bits between their powerful teeth and swallowed them. They licked the blood from the stones. In five minutes there was nothing left of the dead hyena, and they turned their attention once more to Hal.

  Another hyena was killed, and eaten. But this did not satisfy those who had dined. Instead, the taste of blood had made them more furious so they forgot all caution. They pressed in from all sides, biting, snapping, laughing, while Hal kicked with his good foot, swung the bush-jacket with one hand and plied the knife with the other.

  One hyena leaped upon his chest and brought his open jaws close to Hal’s face. Hal stabbed straight up into the animal’s body. The blade stuck in the beast’s ribs. The hyena jumped away, locked its jaws on the handle of the knife, jerked it out and flung it on the rocks well beyond Hal’s reach.

  Hal’s strength was going fast. He could no longer kick with force, and waving the bush-jacket did no good. He wrapped the blood-soaked garment around his head to protect his face. He pushed hyenas away with his bare hands. They always came back.

  He knew the game was up. It was only a matter of minutes now. Roger would come back to find no sign of his brother. Except perhaps the knife - it was too hard to swallow.

  Not only would he be devoured but his bloody clothing as well. Even the blood-stained stones would be swallowed. The hyena habitually swallows stones to aid his digestion. Such hard articles as Hal’s wrist-watch and the few coins in his pockets would go down with the stones.

  Everything would be left clean and neat. You had to give the hyena credit for that - he didn’t leave any mess lying about. He was an even better scavenger than the

  vulture.

  Hal had never been one to call for help. But now he called. A voice would carry a long way across the desert. Perhaps Roger was still within earshot Or perhaps some African was wandering in the night.

  He shouted in English. He shouted in Swahili. He shouted in no language at all. He listened hard for a response, but he heard nothing - except the distant roar of lions.

  At the moment the hyenas were busy finishing off the beast that Hal had just knifed. Hal, drained of all energy, sank into unconsciousness.

  He did not know how many seconds, or minutes, he lay thus before he was roused by the growls of lions. These were followed at once by the uproar of a fight between the hyenas and the newcomers. This was very brief, for a hyena has no wish to tangle with his most powerful enemy, the lion. Squealing in pain and yipping with terror, the hyenas made off across the desert.

  Hal did not feel he had made a very good bargain. His shouts had attracted animals far more dangerous than the hyenas. But perhaps they had gone away. Cautiously, he looked out from under the jacket. No, they were still close to him, and creeping closer - three bristling bodies silhouetted against the stars. They began to sniff at his body.

  Suppose they were man-eaters - there were many such in the Serengeti. Then another thought struck him. Suppose they were not man-eaters. The blood on him was not human blood, but the blood of hyenas, and the lion savagely hates the hyena.

  But the lions were making^ sounds that did not seem very savage. They were gurgles and half-purrs, the sounds of pleasure that might come from a dog or cat. Then one of the visitors lay down on its back close beside him with all four paws in the air and rubbed its soft whiskers against his face. Another patted him gently with its paw as if inviting him to play. These animals were evidently delighted to find a human. They must have known humans, and loved them. They were attracted by the human voice. They had come when he shouted.

  He puzzled over it. What was it he had read in the Nairobi newspapers? Something about the famous Joy Adamson and her three pet lions.

  Joy was the wife of a game warden near the border of Sudan. She had rescued a little orphan lioness whom she named Elsa and had lovingly cared for it from babyhood to motherhood. Elsa gave birth to three cubs and Joy cared for them also. Two were males and one a female. She called them Jespah, Gopa, and Little Elsa. Mother Elsa died. The three cubs grew to full size under Joy’s card.

  Though she didn’t want to part with them, Joy felt they should be free to live with other lions. So she brought them to the lion country of the Serengeti and set them free.

  One of them, Jespah, had been shot with an arrow by an African hunter. The shaft had broken off, leaving the arrow-head in his flesh. Doctors had advised against an operation to remove the arrow-head because the shock might kill the lion. They believed that in time the thing would fall out of its own accord.

  Joy was anxious about the lions after they had been released, particularly about Jespah who was still suffering from his wound. She stayed in the Serengeti, hoping to see her lions again, and give them help if they needed it

  And that brought die story up to date. Hal had read that Joy was now living in the Seronera Safari Camp in the heart of the Serengeti and all day every day she searched the great desert for her lions.

  Perhaps these were Joy Adamson’s lions - perhaps they weren’t. Her animals had been taught to answer to their names. Hal would try an experiment.

  ‘Gopa!’ he said distinctly. The lion that had wanted to play came sharply to attention, raising his ears. ‘Elsa!’ The young lioness that had been wandering about stopped short and looked at Hal. ‘Jespah!’ The male who had been lying on his back came up promptly on all four feet.

  Hal passed his hand along this animal’s flank. He came to something metallic projecting from the rump. There was no doubt about it - it was an arrow-head, and these friendly beasts were Joy Adamson’s lions.

  She didn’t want them back - she only wanted to know if they were well. Hal, if he should ever see her, could report that they were.

  The three lions lay down beside him. Thus guarded, Hal relaxed and slept.

  Chapter 20

  The man in the canyon

  Roger plodded on into the new day.

  He hardly knew it was day. His mind was numb. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, loss of sleep, had almost deprived him of his wits. He only knew that he had to keep going.

  His bleary eyes kept searching the landscape for some sign of human life. The desert stretched away to the horizon without a hut, without even a tree or bush. The animals in the migration trail seemed as weary as he was. The weaker ones fell down with a despairing cry and the others staggered around them or walked over them.

  It was about mid-morning when Roger noticed a break in the plain off to the left. He hobbled over towards it and suddenly found himself on the edge of a precipice looking down into a canyon several hundred feet deep.

  He had been almost asleep on his feet - but he came to
with a start when he saw at the bottom of the gorge some things that looked very much like tents and some black objects moving about that might be human beings.

  New energy pulsed through his tired muscles. He scrambled and slid down the steep slope and approached the tents. A white-haired man in dusty overalls noticed him and came out to meet him.

  Roger’s brain cleared. He knew who this man was. He had seen his picture in the magazines. He was a famous scientist, Dr Louis Leakey. And this must be Olduvai Gorge where Dr Leakey and his wife had patiently dug for twenty years, and had finally thrilled the world with their discovery of the fossils of men who had lived here two million years ago.

  Respectfully, he shook the hand of the great man.

  ‘I know you are Dr Leakey,’ he said. ‘My name is Roger Hunt.’ He said it shyly, for he was sure the name would mean nothing to the doctor.

  ‘Hunt!’ exclaimed Leakey. ‘Not one of the Hunts who cleared the poachers out of Tsavo?’

  Roger nodded, surprised to discover that the Hunts also had their small bit of fame.

  ‘I thought I saw in the papers that you were after man-eaters,’ Dr Leakey went on. ‘And you were using a balloon as a look-out.’

  ‘Yes,’ Roger said. ‘But the balloon was cut loose and we drifted here. We had to junk the balloon. My brother is badly hurt.’

  ‘You don’t look too well off yourself. We were just going to have lunch. Will you join us? Then we’ll go and pick up your brother.’

  In a sort of dream, Roger ate, drank, then found himself in a Land-Rover with Dr Leakey himself at the wheel following the migration trail back to the spot where Hal lay.

  Hal’s friends of the night had left him with the coming of dawn. His leg was swollen and the others had to help him into the Land-Rover. There a canteen of water and some food brought from the Leakey camp revived him.

  Dr Leakey looked at the leg.

  ‘Just a bad strain,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right in a day or two. I’ll take you to Seronera Safari Camp. They have a small plane - perhaps you can charter it back to Tsavo.’

  For the first few miles they ran alongside the migrating herds.

  ‘It’s a strange thing,’ said Dr Leakey. ‘These animals -they’re so much smaller than the ones two million years ago. The rhino then was twice the size of the black rhino today. The baboons, kudus, ostriches, pigs, sheep - they were all giants.’

  ‘Were men giants too?’ Hal asked.

  ‘No, curiously enough, they were only about two thirds the size of modern man. During all these years while animals have become smaller, man has been growing.’

  ‘Your Olduvai Gorge has been called the cradle of man,’ Hal said. ‘Scientists used to think that Asia was the place where man originated.’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Leakey. ‘Now it is pretty well accepted that Man One must have been African, not Asian.’

  He modestly neglected to mention that this change in scientific thinking was due to his own excavations in East Africa.’

  The Land-Rover left the animal trail and struck off to the north-east. There was no road. Dr Leakey kept consulting his compass.

  ‘Dr Leakey, who died in 1973, was a very real person. For the story of his remarkable discoveries, see National Geographic Magazine, February 1965.

  The desert was now neither stones nor sand, but hummocks - little mounds of dirt about a foot high topped with tough grass. The jolting was painful for a fellow with a bad leg and Hal more than once almost lost consciousness before they arrived at Seronera.

  Seronera was no town or village, but just a camp of a dozen rondavels - round huts roofed with thatch. It was in the heart of a pleasant oasis watered by a stream, abounding in trees, and completely surrounded by lions.

  Hal waited on the airstrip while his brother went to the nearby dispensary and returned with a pair of crutches.

  In the small office the newcomers found the warden and a lady who was introduced as Joy Adamson. She was slender and attractive and it was hard to think of her as the playmate of four powerful lions, Elsa and her three big cubs. She could hardly believe her ears when Hal told her he had slept with her lions.

  ‘How do you know they were mine?’

  ‘They answered to their names.’

  ‘Did you find the arrow-head?’

  I did.’

  ‘Was the wound festering?’

  ‘No. Jespah was in good shape, and so were the others.’

  He told her how he had been attacked by hyenas -how the lions had scared them off - how they had protected him the rest of the night. ‘And for all this,’ he added, ‘I am very grateful - grateful to you.’

  ‘Why to me?’

  ‘If you hadn’t loved those lions and taught them to be friends of man I wouldn’t be alive now.’

  Chapter 21

  Unhappy man-eater

  Returning by small plane to Tsavo, the boys told Tanga what had happened and Tanga had news for them.

  ‘It’s about Dugan,’ he said. ‘Dugan wanted to show us what a great lion-killer he was so we would get rid of you and take him back. He went prowling around, looking for a lion. Yesterday just after the sun went down he thought he saw one. He couldn’t see very plainly because it was behind some bushes. He fired at it, and it fell. He went to look at it and found it was no lion - it was a cow. He dug a hole and pushed it in and covered it up and hoped nobody would be the wiser.

  ‘This morning the people of Gula village missed a cow. They followed its tracks out of the village and down the hill, through the woods and out into the plain. Where the tracks ended they saw a pile of fresh dirt and dug up their cow. There was a bullet-hole just back of the left shoulder.

  “They’re pretty smart - those Gula fellows. They knew that you two and Dugan were the only men allowed to carry guns. You were away, so it must have been Dugan. About twenty of them came down here to the camp, dragged him out of his tent, and put him on the first train to Nairobi. Before he left they made him admit that he wanted you out of the way, and that he untied your tent flaps in the hope that Black Mane would kill you. If he comes back, they will kill him. So now you are free of Dugan.’

  The boys were happy that they were rid of this pesky fellow, yet they were a bit sorry for the cow-killer. And not quite sure about Tanga.

  ‘How do you feel about it?’ Hal asked. ‘Perhaps you wish you’d hired him back. We certainly haven’t been too successful.’

  Tanga smiled. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘you haven’t done too badly. It took Colonel Patterson nine months to get two man-eaters. You already got one - and I still have faith you’re going to get the big fellow with the black mane. By the way, I fed your cub while you were gone.’

  Flop welcomed them to the tent with wild leaps and lickings and grinding purrs. They fed him and themselves and collapsed on their beds, ready to sleep a night and a day to make up for the hardships aboard the Jules Verne and in the Serengeti.

  It must have been two or three hours later that they were wakened by a strange sound. It was not loud, but it was close. It was too deep to be the snarl of a hyena. It was not a growl but a sort of moaning, the voice of sadness and loneliness. It went round and round the tent.

  Hal turned on his flashlight. Flop was acting strangely. The little cub was tumbling around inside the tent under the beds and under the chairs, following the sound outside. He answered the moaning voice with plaintive little miaows.

  ‘Could it be Black Mane out there?’ guessed Roger. ‘Could this be his cub?’

  The sound outside was farther away now. Then it faded in the distance. ‘Perhaps we can catch up with him,’ Hal said. They flung on their clothes, grabbed their revolvers, and crept out. Hal hobbled along quite easily on his crutches. They followed the sound to the trees. They brushed aside the bushes and their flashlight suddenly picked up two great yellow eyes.

  A huge, black-maned lion lay on the very spot where they had found and killed the lioness and taken its cub. It was an easy s
hot. The boys raised their revolvers. They fully expected the lion to growl savagely and make ready to spring upon them. But he seemed hardly to notice them. He was wrapped up in his own miseries, and kept moaning softly.

  It was all too plain. Black Mane was mourning the loss of his mate and his cub. Lions are not like some animals which care little about family life. It is lion nature to take one mate and one alone and be true to her to death and beyond. And unlike some animal fathers, the male lion cares deeply for his cubs.

  It was impossible not to feel sorry for Black Mane. The boys felt they were to blame for his unhappiness. They had killed his mate and taken his cub.

  And it seemed unsportsmanlike to shoot a lying-down lion. You wouldn’t shoot your worst enemy unless he was on his feet and attacking you. Besides, the boys were not trained as killers. From earliest childhood they had been taught to take animals alive. They had been with animals so much that they had come to share their feelings. The great sorrowful eyes of Black Mane looked straight into their hearts.

  But they could not forget that he was a man-eater. He was guilty of the death of many men. And the boys had taken on the job of ridding the Tsavo region of man-eaters. It wasn’t fair to the men to let this animal go free, and yet how could you murder this magnificent beast in cold blood?

  Roger lowered his gun. ‘Let’s not do it,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve got to,’ said his brother.

  ‘No we don’t.’

  ‘What else can we do?’

  ‘Take him alive,’ proposed Roger.

  Hal lowered his gun, glad of anything that would delay the moment of murder.

  ‘I suppose you know what you’re saying,’ Hal said. ‘We don’t have our men to help us. How could we take him alive?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Roger admitted. ‘But there must be some way.’

  Still arguing, they found themselves walking back to the tent. They had missed their great opportunity to kill a savage man-eater.

  ‘Why do you suppose he didn’t jump us?’ asked Roger.