Strangely, nothing happened at all for the first several minutes, but the night was filled with the frenzy of roars from the lion, who was lashing himself against the bars. Despite their orders to open fire immediately if a lion should enter the trap, the sepoys were huddled in the rear of the bait compartment, paralyzed with terror. After some time, the voice of Superintendent Farquhar reached them, shouting for them to shoot, godammit! Shoot they did. As fast as they could load and fire they blindly opened up with the Martinis, .450 caliber bullets whipping and whining off in every direction but the right one. At complete right angles, Patterson and Whitehead hugged the floor of their wooden shelter as slugs lashed around them and thumped into the ties. Branches fell and dirt blossomed as the score or more shots erupted until an impossible, completely insane thing happened. A bullet blanged into one of the door’s rails where it was secured with telegraph wire and cut it, the end of the rail fell free and the lion squeezed out to evaporate into the night. It couldn’t have happened. But it did. From a range of inches, with two soldiers firing more than twenty rounds, the lion was merely lightly creased by a ricochet and was freed to kill again. Only in Africa …
As if Patterson hadn’t learned by then, bad luck has a way of rubbing it in. Six days later, on the ninth, after the main party of hunters had left in disgust, he was leaving his boma just after dawn when a screaming Swahili popped up, running toward him, yelling, “Simba! Simba!” and looking back over his shoulder. Patterson stopped him and found out that both lions had tried to nab a man from the camp nearest the river but had missed and killed a donkey instead, which they were at this moment eating a short distance away. The colonel dashed back into his tent for the double-barreled express rifle lent him by Farquhar, in case just such a chance might turn up. Loading it, he prevailed upon the African to return and show him where the lions were dining on the donkey. (They must have been very hungry, as this is the first recorded case of their taking other than human food.) All went just peachy with the stalk, Patterson even able to discern the outline of one of the cats through the heavy bush, but he held his fire for a more open chance. Naturally, the native stepped on a rotten branch, and the lion melted quickly back into heavier cover. Practically hysterical at the idea of missing yet another chance, Patterson ran back to camp to round up a crew of coolie beaters and all the cans, drums and other noisemakers they could lay their hands on.
As quickly as possible, he arranged them around the far side of the thicket the lion had entered, with instructions to give him time to cover the down side of the thicket before starting the beat to drive the lion out. Patterson sneaked back to the other side, finding a termite hill near a well-worn game trail which it seemed reasonable the lion would use. Hiding behind it, he got ready just before the first clatter of metal and blare of horns began. Almost immediately, to his excited joy, a gigantic, maneless lion swaggered out onto the trail and, with looks behind him, started toward Patterson. The angle was such that the man was not completely concealed by the termite mound, but the big cat didn’t notice him until they were only fifteen yards apart and the hunter made a slow movement of raising the double-barrel to lock the sights on the man-eater’s brain. The lion recoiled in surprise back onto his haunches. But too late. Patterson nestled the front bead into the wide vee of the rear sight and started to squeeze off the shot. At that range he couldn’t miss, and the heavy Nitro Express bullet would take off the cat’s head as if he’d had a stick of dynamite jammed up his nose. But it didn’t.
Should you be under the impression that the most terrifying sounds of the world of big-game hunting are the close snarl of a man-eater and the shrieking trumpet of a bull elephant right over your head, you’re wrong. It is the cold, dead, metallic click! of the firing pin falling on a defective cartridge primer. There is no sound quite like it—trust me; unimaginably clear and crisp, yet at the same time slightly hollow and muffled by the barrel’s chamber. It is one of the true sounds of death.
As the British might say it, up Patterson had screwed. He was used to a shotgun, but there are differences between a double-barreled rifle and a smoothbore. His bolt-action .303 Enfield bore not the slightest resemblance to the borrowed express rifle, and in times when one needs a rifle, he tends to need it very badly. It may have been the cartridge that was defective; perhaps the firing-pin mechanism itself was broken. No matter. To take an unfamiliar and, even worse, untried weapon against man-eaters is looking for even more trouble than is already at hand. To the good luck of his future readership and his creditors, the beaters were now close enough that the lion was forced to run, almost vanishing into the heavy bush before Patterson even realized that he had a second barrel, loaded and ready to fire with a mechanism independent from the first. At last he shot again and was finally rewarded by an answering snarl from the lion, indicating a hit. But the blood soon stopped, and the track was lost on rocky ground. It just didn’t seem fated that Patterson was to kill the lions. Maybe the stars were trying to tell him something.
But there’s one thing you have to give John Henry: He doesn’t dazzle you with footwork, but he sure hangs in there! Heading back to camp, his spirits badly needing garters, he was somewhat cheered to find that there was quite a bit left of the donkey, perhaps enough that the lion would return for the rest that night. Despite earlier experiences, he had a machan, or raised shooting platform, erected a few yards from the carcass, as there were no handy trees. It wasn’t much, just four poles sunk into the earth, inclined toward each other at the tops, with a plank lashed into place as a seat. It was hardly the sort of affair that I would pick from which to display my sweet young body to a couple of man-eaters, but Patterson appeared to have thought it just dandy, although it was only twelve feet high. Nonetheless, the colonel wired the defunct burro to a nearby stump so it couldn’t be dragged away and, at sundown, climbed up to face a night of utter, moonless dark and the savage silence of creeping death. If this sounds melodramatic, try sitting up some night until dawn in your own living-room easy chair, motionless in the dark, even knowing there aren’t any man-eating lions around. As the hours wore on, mental exhaustion lulled him into almost a drugged state, somehow feeling he was drifting weightless in the quiet shroud of night.
Crack! The snapping of a twig sounded like a sonic boom in the stillness; Patterson lurched out of his reverie. His ears hollow with the rush of his own blood, he could hear the tiniest rustling of a large body picking its way through the dry grass and bushes. “The man-eater,” he thought to himself; “surely tonight my luck will change, and I shall bag one of the brutes.” It is somehow doubtful, even in pristine Victorian times, that this was the precise syntax that rushed through Patterson’s hackle-bristled skull. Silence again, so quiet it was loud. Then, a long, deep, drawn-out sigh from very close, followed by another creep of movement and a nasty snarl. The lion had spotted the man, just a few feet above him.
Patterson was to have considerable time to reconsider his stupidity in building the machan in the first place, because, as soon as J.H. was seen, the lion ignored the donkey and resolutely began to stalk the man. It was a war of nerves in the classic sense, and it’s also clear that the lion probably had a lot more nerve than the worn-out colonel. For a terrifying two hours, the lion sneaked round and round the tree platform, searching for a weak point, Patterson trying to keep absolutely still, expecting a charge any second. The man was afraid even to blink his eyes, yet unable to make out the dim form of the cat below in the darkness and fire. By midnight, he was almost stupefied by nervous exhaustion, every muscle jumping as he tried to anticipate the lion’s coming spring. A second of cardiac-arrest terror raced through him as something struck him a sharp blow on the back of the head. The man-eater! His involuntary start was answered by a harsh snarl from below. His heart coming through the buttons of his shirt, he realized that it was an owl that had tried to light on his head, mistaking him in his silence for part of a tree. Good garden peas! Of all times to be taken for a knothead!
A chorus of shouted questions in Hindustani carried from the camp a quarter mile away, to which Patterson called back that he was unhurt and believed the lion was dead. Instantly, the greatest cheer which may have been heard to that date in east Africa went up, fireflies of light from torches darting through the bush as the coolies ran to the machan. Amid the bedlam of drums and horns played by the insanely happy Indians, each man prostrated himself before the engineer, shouting, “Mabarak! Mabarak!” or “Saviour.”
Patterson still could not quite believe his luck and did not permit a search for the lion’s body in case it wasn’t yet dead. Back at camp, first light was awaited with a wild party, the African contingent particularly uninhibited with a leaping dance of triumph. At last, dawn crept in tie-dyed majesty through the shadows, and, with a group of men, Patterson returned to the scene of the shooting.
Over the hours of waiting, he had convinced himself that somehow the cat had escaped again—he could hardly be blamed in light of his previous experiences—so his shock at rounding a bush and seeing the lion crouched as if ready to spring can be imagined. Before he fired again, he noticed that it was as dead as virginity. The festivities began all over again, Patterson being carried around on the shoulders of the men until he was dizzy. When things settled down a bit, he had an opportunity to examine the body. As lions go, this was no ninety-pound weakling, but a tremendous animal, nine feet, eight inches from tail-tip to nose, forty-five inches at the shoulder, and requiring eight men to carry him back to camp to be skinned. Like most man-eaters, because human flesh is much more fat-marbled than that of game, the cat was in superb condition and extremely heavy. Two bullets had been effective—one in the hind leg, and the killer, behind the left shoulder and through the heart.
The news of the man-eater’s death spread like a grass fire through the bush and along the rail line until hundreds of congratulatory telegrams and scores of fascinated visitors poured into the bridgehead. But for the moment everybody seemed to have forgotten a not very minor item: There were two Man-eaters of Tsavo.
It was only a couple of nights later that the surviving lion cleared up any hopeful speculation that he might have retired. A permanent-way inspector was awakened by the sound of something prowling around his bungalow and veranda. Thinking it just a drunken coolie, he shouted angrily through the door for him to go away but luckily did not open up. Quite probably because the remaining coolies were by now well enough protected to be difficult to catch and the man-eater certainly hungry, the lion vented his frustration and appetite by killing and eating two of the inspector’s goats then and there. Hearing of the incident the next morning, Patterson decided to sit up near the hut that evening, waiting in a vacant iron shanty that had a rifle loophole in the side. Just outside, he tied three goats as bait to a heavy length of iron rail. All was quiet through the night until, just at dawn, the lion finally made an appearance, killed one of the goats and dragged the others away, rail and all. We have no idea why Patterson didn’t fire, nor does he offer an excuse.
When the sun was fully up, Patterson and a small party followed the drag mark of the rail some 400 yards into the bush and smack into the lion, who was still having breakfast. This time, however, he did not slink away but suddenly charged. With a remarkable demonstration of good sense, all native personnel quickly disappeared up the nearest tree, while the colonel and one of his white assistants, a Mr. Winkler, stayed put. The lion, for some reason, broke off the charge, although the question again arises as to why neither Patterson nor Winkler fired a shot. After throwing some stones into the bushes where the lion had run, the men came on the dead goats, two of them hardly touched. Back to the graveyard shift for Patterson.
Having learned a lasting lesson from the earlier night in the rickety machan, he had a very strong platform erected a few feet from the dead goats and, as he was thoroughly exhausted, brought along his Indian gunbearer, Mahina, to help keep watch. Several hours into the vigil, when Patterson was just dozing off, he felt Mahina grab his arm and point in the direction of the goats. “Sher !” (Literally “tiger,” although clearly meant to mean “lion,” as there is a terrible shortage of tigers in Africa.) John Henry grabbed the double-barreled shotgun loaded with solid slugs and waited, eyes peeled for movement. In a few moments the lion appeared between some bushes and passed almost directly beneath the platform. The colonel fired both barrels almost at once into the lion’s shoulder and was overjoyed to knock the big cat down. As Patterson switched to the .303 magazine rifle, the lion bounced back up and evaporated into the bush in a hail of random bullets. Certain he would be found dead in the morning, Patterson left Mahina to keep watching and went happily to sleep.
When at last dawn came, the two men followed the blood spoor with drooping spirits. At first, there was quite a lot of blood, but it ran out shortly, and the track was lost on rocky ground.
The next ten days were filled with increasing hope that, even though no corpus delecti had been located, the lion might have died of the effect of his wounds. Although nobody had been attacked, neither did anyone let down his guard. This was just as well. On the night of December 27, the old horror started again, an eruption of shouts coming from a crew of trolleymen who slept in a tree near Patterson’s boma. It being a densely cloudy night with the moon hidden, the most the Sahib could do was send a few slugs in the lion’s direction, which drove him off without a kill. In the morning, tracks showed that he had hung around for a long time, entering every single tent (all were unoccupied) and leaving a thick band of tracks in a circle around the trolleymen’s tree.
As darkness fell, Patterson was again aloft, in the same tree in which the trolleymen had roosted. It was a perfect night, for a change, the moon full and flooding the bush with a strong silver glow that gave excellent visibility. Again, Mahina was in tow and slept while his boss took first watch. At midnight, they changed, and Patterson fell soundly asleep until about two A.M., when he was awakened by a strange, uncanny feeling that something was wrong. This is a peculiar and most discomfiting sensation difficult to describe to someone who has never experienced it, as I have. It has only happened to me while in the bush and is rarely, if ever, wrong. It’s almost as if danger gives off a psychic aura. As something of an offshoot, consider the feeling of someone staring at you across a theater lobby and the real sensation of eyes touching you. This, incidentally, is often the case with animals, and I think many professional hunters will agree with me that game is sometimes spooked by being stared at for long periods during a stalk. I try to keep my eyes off any animal I am stalking, lest it sense me through this weird mechanism.
Mahina was awake and alert but had detected nothing. Patterson carefully looked all about the tree and saw nothing either, although the feeling was still with him. About to shrug it off, he suddenly thought he saw something move a way off, among some low bushes, silver-plated in the moonlight. As he continued to stare, he was startled to find that the strange sensation was quite correct: The man-eater was carefully stalking the men.
Fascinated in a crawly way, Patterson marveled at the flowing, soundless skill of the lion stealing stealthily toward him, a clear demonstration of his experiences as he took advantage of the smallest particle of cover. Using his head and determined to wait until the lion was as close as possible, J.H. remained still un
til the great cat was a mere twenty yards away, a tawny moon-washed form flattened against the sandy earth. Slipping the .303 into position, the colonel sent a hot whiplash of lead into the lion’s chest, hearing the meaty impact of the bullet over the muzzle report. A terrific growl blew over the hunters as the killer turned in a blink and ran off with a series of great, smooth bounds. In the thin cover he was in sight long enough for Patterson to get off three more shots, the last of which brought another snarl. Then he was gone. It was another long wait until dawn.
As soon as it was light enough to see the trail, Patterson, Mahina and an African tracker immediately gave chase to the wounded lion, the Indian carrying a Martini carbine, which, in his hands, was as useful as a martini cocktail. With a good blood spoor, the men were able to cover ground quickly as the bush became more and more dense. After no more than a quarter of a mile, they were stopped by a ferocious growl right in front of them. Peering carefully through the cover, Patterson could make out the lion clearly, lips drawn back to expose thick, long fangs in warning. At Patterson’s shot, the lion began a determined, flat-out charge, catching another bullet as he got going, which knocked him down, but he regained his feet and kept on coming, like a nightmare. Another aimed shot had no effect whatever. The .303 is no cannon; then, neither is it a popgun, but Patterson dropped it and reached behind him for the heavier-caliber Martini, which should have been immediately passed to him by Mahina. If he was already half-panicked at not being able to stop the lion with accurately placed shots, the empty air his fist closed around must not have added greatly to his confidence. Mahina, who had reached the immediate conclusion that discretion is the better part of chasing down wounded, charging, man-eating lions, was by now well up a tree. So was the carbine. Unarmed, Patterson, demonstrating an amazing understanding of the concept, was not far behind. At the moment the lion reached the tree, Patterson was just out of reach. Had one of his bullets not chanced to break the lion’s hind leg, apparently one of his favorite lion shots, the colonel might well have gained fame as the highest-ranking meal the Tsavo lions had eaten. Seeing that he was too late, the lion limped back toward the thicket from which he had come.
Death in the Silent Places Page 4