Death in the Silent Places

by Peter Hathaway Capstick

  At this point, I can’t resist a bit of literary forensic diagnosis. As usual, Stigand made as little as possible of the terrible injury, although he was plainly concerned and probably scared motherless (and with every right). He was casual enough to say that the chest wound had taken his mind off the missing fingernail, yet added that he felt nothing but a numb sensation in his chest. (This tends to confirm some reports of many badly mauled hunters: that large and severe wounds usually do not hurt until sometime after the event takes place.) The next comment, and a key one as to the severity of the tear, was his statement that, “It struck me that it must have pierced my lungs.” Well, I submit that this means that he could clearly see his ribs and possibly a hole between them or, with his hunter’s and soldier’s knowledge of chest wounds, would not have been worried that a lung had been pierced. He even sat down on the ground for a few minutes to see whether or not he would begin to spit up blood, so it must have been mighty close.

  Stigand located the wound for us almost exactly where the heart is traditionally supposed to be, close to the area of the left nipple, the same spot where one would place the right hand to pledge allegiance to the flag. It follows, therefore, that the left breast muscle or pectoral (pectoralis major) must have been pierced through by the horn and then torn free of the chest and rib cage. This would be severe enough for an ordinary man, but let’s not forget that Stigand was built like a goddam gorilla; those Sandow exercises especially developed the upper body, the most prominent muscles of which are the pectorals.

  About the time that Stigand determined that his lungs were not, after all, full of horn holes, there was another rustling in the grass which scared the loincloths practically off the Angonis. The rhinos were coming back. One of the carriers helped Chauncey back up and got his rifle into his hands. Anticlimax. The rhinos got wind of them and trotted off without charging.

  Stigand, still dazed, sat down again to consider the situation, rather closely, I suppose, because what he did now would likely determine if he was going to live or die. He was bleeding heavily, by his own estimates thirty miles from home, only too aware of the probability of complications—such as death—setting in. Now, after a while, the shock was wearing off, and the pain must have been ripping him in half. At last he decided to send one of his men back to Fort Manning to advise the other resident officer of his predicament while he tried to make it to the nearest village, the distance to which, damn his eyes, he didn’t tell us. However, by interpretation of his estimates (as a scout he was trained to estimate mileage accurately), it could not possibly have been less than six to ten miles, even if the village happened to lie in a straight line between the site of the accident and Fort Manning, presuming that we may exclude the possibility that he would walk to a village farther away from help. Stigand did not mention it, but he must have forced potassium permanganate crystals into the wound to try to prevent infection, as Colonel Thorp reported that Chauncey was greatly bothered by the crystals being forced out with the blood flow. After “some time” Stigand began to feel very faint and weak (small wonder, considering the blood loss, shock and stumbling along rugged miombo trails with the upper left quadrant of his chest torn off!) and contrived to have a pole cut and himself lashed to it with his puttees. For a man of Stigand’s strength and stamina to order himself trussed to a pole like a fresh-killed wart hog gives some idea of how much pain he was in. This, however, hurt him so terribly that he had himself unwrapped and somehow managed to walk the rest of the agonizing way under his own power.

  Arriving at last in the village, he sat down and sent for his camp kit, which was at another village some distance away. When it pitched up hours later, he did what little he could to bandage himself and then lay down, figuring that there was no way that the other officer from Fort Manning, Captain J. C. L. Mostyn, could reach him before noon the next day.

  When Stigand’s runner made it to Fort Manning in good time, there was a case of “something being lost in the translation.” The Angoni carrier found Mostyn, and, whether the captain misunderstood or the Angoni misspoke, the message that the officer understood was that the white man had killed a rhino, to which he replied, “Good.” The information was repeated, Mostyn not understanding the native’s growing agitation until it finally came through that it was the reverse of the situation: A rhino had killed the white man. The Angoni was apparently too shaken to explain what had happened to Mostyn’s satisfaction, but it was clear that there had been a bad accident. Very much to his credit, Mostyn grabbed an Indian hospital attendant by the name of Ghulam Mohamed and was off on the forced march to help Stigand by seven in the evening.

  Chauncey was awake, in too much pain to sleep, when Mostyn and Mohamed arrived at two in the morning. Stigand thought it an excellent feat to cover the twenty to twenty-four miles in such quick time, in the dark and over bad trails, not even knowing for sure where Chauncey had decided to go. (Since Stigand reported the accident to have happened thirty miles from the fort, his reference to his rescuers having come twenty to twenty-four miles is the basis for our deduction that he himself walked six to ten miles after the goring, not exactly a stroll in his condition.) In fact, the Indian was so exhausted that, despite his own wounds, Stigand suggested the man rest until morning before attempting to doctor his injuries. The Indian gallantly refused, sewing him up by lamplight, doing such a fine job of disinfecting and stitching that, after a mere three weeks’ rest, Stigand set off on a 240-mile march, still in bandages, and made it in ten days!

  If 1905 was not exactly a vintage year for luck, it’s just as well that Stigand didn’t know what was in his stars for the following season.

  I know you haven’t forgotten that macabre little Tooner-ville Trolley, the Uganda Railroad and its environs, that gave Patterson Sahib such a wonderful release from boredom a bit earlier in this report. Well, about seventy-five miles up the line from Tsavo is a small stop named, with uncanny perception, Simba Station. You will also remember that “simba” is KiSwahili for “lion.” The place didn’t get its name on an arbitrary basis, either, the whole area being famous for large numbers of lion, and it was to this spot in 1906 that the battered, tattered Stigand came to collect a few of the species.

  The significant feline attraction of Simba Station was, in the dry season, the spillage of the main water tank used to replenish steam locomotives that collected in a pool or trough next to the tracks, this being the only handy surface water for a considerable distance. Accordingly, one moonlit night found Chauncey sitting on one of the iron beams of the tank’s frame about seven feet in the air, which wasn’t exactly prudent, considering how high a lion can reach.

  After a short wait, Stigand saw a lioness padding casually up to drink, stopping directly beneath him. Although only a few feet away, the angle made the shot impossible. (At this juncture, it must be iterated that both lion and leopard of either sex were considered vermin in eastern Africa at the time, indeed, for many years afterward. As a matter of general practice, if a group of lions of both sexes was met, the normal procedure was to take the female first, as she would be faster and more inclined to charge.) Stigand shifted slightly to clear the shot, and the lioness must have heard him as she gave a bound of about four yards to one side and stood, listening. Chauncey nailed her in the chest, with a probable heart shot, as she ran like mad 200 yards up the line and fell dead across the tracks.

  The moon must have been very bright because, just as Stigand was thinking of hopping off his perch, he was able to see clearly two male lions walk out of the bush and come up to the body of the lioness. They inspected her, scratching and pawing, for about a half hour—lions will eat other dead lions with no compunctions—and then slowly began to approach the water. The captain waited patiently until the lead cat was almost on him before firing. As he squeezed the trigger, the lion collapsed into the water trough below him, and Chauncey swung the sights on the second simba. It had stopped at the shot but then continued on without the least concern. Stigan
d placed a slug precisely into the dark mass of his chest. He thrashed around for a few moments, then dashed into the heavy cover and grass nearby where he was found the next morning, dead as stale beer.

  Sounds like a pretty simple situation, right? Three shots, three dead lions. Not quite, chaps. Just as Stigand was again about to bail off the girder, the lion lying “dead” in the water trough revived and took off through the night into the high grass, barely catching a late snapshot from Stigand, who, we may be sure, was muttering some very specific comments. It would have been extremely interesting had he landed, off balance from his jump from the girder, just as the lion came to.

  If you’ve spent any time in Africa, you know for a certainty that this was the precise moment the moon chose to duck behind some heavy clouds, reducing visibility drastically just when you needed it the most, such as while wandering around high grass in the middle of the night, looking for wounded lions which may or may not be dead.

  Chauncey decided to go up to the station and get his orderly to bring a lamp. They passed the spot where the last lion had fallen—Stigand had heard him pile up at his last shot—but could see nothing and elected to check out the lioness up the track before hyenas or a train came along and reduced his trophy to lion hash. By this time, a small knot of station hands had gathered about fifty yards from the place where the third lion had disappeared, interested in the proceedings, and Stigand passed them on his way back to have another try at spotting the lion’s body in the grass. Finally, he was just able to make out a dim lump in the darkness but was unaware whether it was dead or alive.

  Darkness has a curious way of distorting distances and angles, and so it was with Stigand that night. The body seemed to be quite a way down the line, and he imagined he was standing on an embankment with the lion well below him. Reckoning that he would have an easy shot if the lion was not dead and tried to charge uphill, he decided to have a closer look over the nonexistent “edge.”

  Big mistake.

  In a flash of dark fury, the lion was on him in a single bound, the orderly behind him disappearing as if tele-ported. As the lion sprang over the embankment, which proved to be only a foot high, the man managed to get off a shot into its chest the instant before the big cat hit him, the right paw, studded with two-inch pruning hooks, over the man’s left shoulder, digging into meat, Stigand’s left arm firmly in the lion’s jaws. Extended along the forestock of the rifle, it was the first part of the captain’s anatomy to come within reach of the fangs.

  The tremendous impact leveled Stigand, and he now found himself flat on his back, the arm being very thoroughly chewed, although the rifle was still clenched in his fist, pinned under his body. Stigand tried to break free, scrambling around with his arm still between the massive teeth until he was kneeling beside the shaggy, rumbling head.

  Okay, what else would you expect Chauncey Hugh Stigand to do? He wound up with his free right hand and began to punch the lion as hard as he could in the back of the neck. As powerful a man as Stigand was, I can hardly believe that such blows would faze a furious, wounded 450-pound cat. Maybe the punches, directed from behind, confused the lion into thinking that there was another attacker. Whatever the reason, the lion gave him one more terrible shake and dropped him, running back into the grass between the man and the station house.

  You’ve got to hand it to old C.H., at least for his presence of mind. He carefully reloaded and eased past the spot where the lion was presumably lying, although without enough visibility for a shot. Classic Stigand fare: “I could not see him in the grass, and thinking him well left alone [this with his own arm almost torn off] continued toward the station, meeting the admiring audience who had witnessed the scene just past the water tank.”

  When he reached the station house, after deciding not to give the lion any more trouble, he took stock of his own condition with a paraffin light. His clothes looked as if they’d been passed through a shredding machine, he had eight big holes in his left arm leaking blood and three marvelously macho-looking claw marks on his back. By now, we automatically suspect these are just the highlights; he must have accumulated more damage, especially since he reported that his pants were also torn and bloody. The gravest part of the wound, besides blood loss, was an almost-severed nerve and the loss of the use of his left wrist. He recalled, however, that he had no difficulty in reloading the rifle and coming to the firing position on his way back to the station.

  He sat up in the waiting room for six hours, until the Nairobi train was due, a wire having been sent to the stop at Makindu to bring some dressings. Under his direction, the stationmaster syringed out as best he could the worst fang holes and scratches with good old potassium permanganate solution to prevent the horrible infections caused by the layer of septic filth in the grooves of lions’ claws, a layer of decaying meat from earlier meals. At last the train arrived, and the guard bandaged him up; he was finally able to board at 5 A.M. Of course, all the white passengers were asleep at this hour, and, in a colony where inebriation was not exactly unknown, one glimpse of the tattered, staggering figure was enough almost to get him bodily thrown back onto the tracks until he was able to explain what had happened. In the end, the passengers were most helpful.

  Even the iron-willed Stigand conceded that the lurching journey to Nairobi was a solid whirl of agony, now that his wounds had stiffened, especially the torn nerve in his mangled arm. He made it to Nairobi Hospital, though, but over the next few days it was a very, very close thing that he did not lose the arm, which “swelled to enormous proportions and assumed every color of the rainbow, but owing to the assiduous attention of the nurses it was just saved.”

  Although the arm was spared probable amputation—which would almost surely have been required had he not been mauled right at a railroad station instead of out in the bush, where the infection would probably have killed him without hospitalization within twelve hours—it would be a long road before he finally recovered fully. It was seven months before he could use his wrist at all and a full two years until he felt steady at shooting. It’s interesting to note that he literally forced himself on another lion hunt just nine months after the mauling at Simba Station, being genuinely concerned that he might have lost his nerve from the horrible experience. For Stigand to admit this gives some insight into how much the whole episode affected him, not just physically but mentally. After all, I sometimes wake up with the wee-hour cold sweats, and I never really got nailed, let alone creamed by two of Africa’s heavies in the space of about a year!

  Thorp reports that Stigand was sent back to Britain for further work on the arm nerve, and it is unclear from the surviving records whether Thorp was with him there or if Stigand was still undergoing treatment upon his return to British East Africa. Wherever it was, Colonel Thorp gives us some idea of the extended, excruciating ordeal that Stigand went through during the period the nerve was regenerating: “The pluck with which he withstood the cruel but necessary pain of the treatment for the restoration of nerve power [and God can only imagine what process that might have been in 1906!] was characteristic of the man. Often I saw great beads of cold sweat gather on his brow while undergoing the treatment, yet he continued to converse in a perfectly natural manner the while.”

  This statement of Thorp’s reminds me of the similarity on another point between Lawrence of Arabia and Stigand. Lawrence, on one occasion, reportedly extinguished a lighted lucifer match with his bare fingers without a blink. His orderly, suspecting some sleight-of-hand parlor trick, tried the same thing, obviously burning himself painfully.

  “Eh, Gawd! It ’urts!” exclaimed the orderly in surprise, dropping the match. “Wot’s the secret, then?”

  “The secret,” intoned Lawrence in his mystical way, “is not minding that it hurts.”

  Ah, but whatever happened to the lion that had subdivided Stigand?

  Before he left Simba Station, Stigand gave explicit instructions to his orderly, the man who had bolted at the lion’s char
ge, repeating himself three times, as Chauncey refers to the man as being a “rather dense person.” Nothing was very involved; the orderly was to climb the water tower at first light, where he would be able to perceive the lion without danger and fire at it to see if it was dead. Clearly, nobody was to go anywhere near the place in the grass where it had last been seen until the cat had been accounted for.

  Oh, yes. Africa wins again. As might be expected, precisely the opposite to Stigand’s instructions was carried out. A foot procession set out in the morning, led by an unarmed boy, with the rifle-toting orderly bringing up the rear where he could do the least possible good. The boy saw the lion lying in the grass and ran up to it, presuming it to be dead. Wrong. The kid was savagely clawed, while the orderly, who was even a member of the same tribe, did nothing. The boy was finally able to draw away because (it was later discovered) Stigand’s first bullet of the night before had damaged the lower jaw of the lion, and, although it was demonstrably able to give a ferocious account of itself to Stigand when the wound was fresh, its jaws had probably stiffened during the night and it was unable to bite. A guard from the next train finally killed the die-hard lion with his service rifle, firing from the train’s guard van.

  Stigand stayed out of additional trouble with dangerous game until about 1912, despite the fact that he had by now established himself as one of the top elephant hunters in Africa. His military exploits during—and after—this period were so diverse as to make their description impossible, except to say that he was the first white man to undertake a fantastic journey through unknown Abyssinia on his way back to England, let alone complete the trip. Arriving back at his regiment in Britain, he discovered he was several months overdue on his leave. This was not funny in the British Army. However, when the investigatory board, convened to determine his fate, discovered what he had done and where he had been, he was exonerated fully and even given a special grant of fifty pounds by the Geographical Section of the General Staff to help defray his expenses. In 1910, when the Lado Enclave, a boot-shaped piece of Belgian territory, was ceded to Sudan by prior agreement upon the death of Leopold II, it was Stigand, a mere captain, who was selected to do the actual “taking-over.” Following this, he was placed in charge of Kajo Kaji District in Mongalla, the Upper Nile Province, a post he held for some time until, in 1915, he made major and, four years later, became governor, or bey, of the whole of Mongalla Province.