P.J. got off a note by special messenger to his old Boer pal, General “Japie” van Deventer, proposing his interception and enclosing the captured dispatch. Two hours later, an orderly arrived at Pretorius’ bed, saluted and handed him van Deventer’s enthusiastic reply: “Herewith my car. Come immediately to headquarters.” The doctors raised the canvas roof, promising Pretorius that he would be dead within a week even if his luck really held. But, then, a lot of people had been predicting Pretorius’ death for some time without result.
Upon arrival at HQ, van Deventer had the details set up in accordance with the scout’s plan as neatly as pins in a bowling alley. Although Pretorius looked and felt like death warmed over, he was instructed to send his forces into the bush to tell the native population of the area to head for Allied lines, where they would be fed and helped in every way; their own goods, which were to be torched, promised to be replaced.
Arriving at the Bangala River, at the appointed crossing, Pretorius was quick to note that the largest pool in the half-dry water course was undisturbed, certainly not used by the enemy and his animals as yet. They had beaten the unsuspecting Tafel! Pretorius sent word into the bush to comply with van Deventer’s orders to the natives to carry as much food as possible and to burn the rest at once. The further advice that anybody caught in the area after five that afternoon would be arrested was probably unnecessary, but Pretorius was not about to permit a single kernel of corn to reach the starving Germans. Even as he was sending off the last of his messages, scouts came panting up to say that Tafel and his huge force were at that moment arriving at the pool. The Germans didn’t know it then, but they might as well be landing on the moon with nothing but a pocketful of jelly beans, for all the supplies they would find here. All around him, tendrils of smoke advertised Pretorius’ scorched-earth plan, but then, Tafel had no way of knowing that von Lettow-Vorbeck had not received his message requesting he be met here with supplies. There were no locals to give any information, having been moved out by Pretorius, but the scouts did capture two German askaris, who told of having been on half rations for many days. Under the camouflaged stare of the Afrikaaner, Tafel waited two critical and hungry days on the Bangala, until realizing that von Lettow was pretty clearly not on his way. He pushed downriver for ten miles, Pretorius and his men always ahead of him, watching the scraggly, straggling, starving Germans with what safely may be presumed to be little pity. Coursing well ahead of Tafel, Pretorius and a small scout force arrived at a gorge overlooking the river on the third day. As they looked the place over, it sounded, a noise that shook Pretorius to his shoes. It was a rifle shot, echoing and reverberating among the rocks. It had not come from Tafel’s column, but from elsewhere. Yet where? Who had fired it? More important, had Tafel’s men heard it?
“Good God!” whispered Pretorius aloud. He knew that von Lettow was somewhere in the district, loaded with enough supplies to save Tafel, even if only by accident. If that shot had come from von Lettow’s men, knocking off a rare antelope for the pot, and if it led the two enemy forces to each other, not only would the plan to starve Tafel into surrender be lost, but Pretorius would be caught between two enemy armies. Ordering his men to lie low, Pretorius scrambled up the escarpment as fast as he could, his hands and knees bloody from his haste. At the top of the gorge, another ridge ran farther upward above the river trail like a stone spine. Reaching the crest, Pretorius lay flat on his stomach where he could see the suffering askaris and white soldiers of Major Tafel winding along. To his horror, on the other side, marching in the same direction, was von Lettow-Vorbeck’s army! From his vantage pont, Pretorius saw that the two paths met not far ahead, and, although he had kept the knowledge of each force from the other, it looked as if fate was about to pitch a crowbar into the gears of his delicate plan.
Dying of suspense and frustration, Pretorius could do nothing but watch the two enemy columns plod blindly toward each other. At least, Tafel showed no sign of having heard the shot, although it didn’t seem to matter much now. Then, as he watched with mushrooming despair, the Tafel column stopped, the officers knotting together in what seemed to be a heated discussion. The argument, lost in the sound of the river as it swept through the gorge, abruptly ended. Before Pretorius’ unbelieving eyes, the Tafel force turned away from its rendezvous with von Lettow, making a turn onto another path that led away at a right angle. Pretorius’ relief was so great that he almost gave himself away, trying to smother the half-insane laughter he was unable to contain. It was incredible. They had snatched starvation from the jaws of salvation only a half mile from safety. Across the bare, rocky Makonde plateau they marched, hunger chewing at their guts like rats.
Pretorius climbed back down the ridge, praying that nobody would find a reason to fire another shot. Assembling his men, he followed Tafel’s trail and within a mile came on two German askaris dying of hunger, barely able to move. With them was one of the men’s wives, also near death. The enemy troops told Pretorius that they had not eaten in days and that the whole force was about to drop.
Late in the afternoon, as the Germans were at the edge of a shallow, sandy river, they spotted some of the Allied force. Not knowing how many men opposed them, they dug in and camouflaged their positions against a possible attack. While they used up more precious energy, Pretorius and his men bedded down a mere 600 yards away, up at first light to watch Tafel continue his death march.
That morning, as the Germans crossed the Ruvuma, they came into contact with the first natives they had seen in four days, learning with growing horror of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s route and how closely they must have missed him. The general was flush with food and supplies, captured from the Portuguese at Ngomano, an easy victory won when the Portuguese ran for their lives after their commander was killed. Too late. It was easy to figure out, even if hard to accept, that Tafel was much too far from von Lettow to attempt to reach him. With what must have been nearly the last of his own strength, he wrote to his commander: “Am ceasing hostilities at 6 P.M. Wish to surrender on best possible terms.”
Guess who intercepted the message.
Pretorius sent a message by runner to General Hannyng-ton, commander of a brigade of King’s African Rifles which was nearby. That afternoon, November 28, 1917, the entire Tafel command surrendered. By Pretorius’ personal count there were 3,400 black askaris, 1,000 porters, 100 white noncommissioned officers and 19 German officers, a total of more than 4,500 enemy personnel out of the war. It wasn’t the end of the war, but it was the end of German East Africa. It was also nearly the end of the man who had conceived the plan and executed it. Although a car was sent for him, it was needed for worse cases, and Pretorius was forced to ride thirty miles back to the hospital he had left so few days ago. In addition to his previous illnesses, he had contracted neuritis, developed acute gastritis and was even found to have burst an artery in his lung! None of the doctors gave him much of a chance to pull through, but he did; several months later actually dining with one of the officers on Tafel’s staff, who was present when the fateful decision was made to turn away from von Lettow-Vorbeck. The officer, a Captain von Brandis, claimed he had been the only one for continuing straight but had been outvoted.
The East African war continued for another year, less three days. General von Lettow-Vorbeck continued to perform magnificently, outfoxing a vastly larger Allied force at almost every turn. He made it, in fact, all the way to the mouth of the Zambezi, then falling back on Lake Nyasa. Unbowed and not badly bloodied, he was just beginning the invasion of Rhodesia on November 2, 1918, and doing very well until halted by the Armistice, which was signed in Europe on the 12th of that month, and the war’s end.
One might think that after such exploits as the hunt for the Königsberg and the destruction of the last enemy force in German East Africa, peacetime would be looming as something of a bore to a man like Pretorius. It certainly was not; he returned to his adventurous life of big-game hunting as soon as his health permitted. One of his
greatest exploits at arms was the shooting out of the stunted herd of kali, or rogue elephants, of the Addo District of South Africa. This particular herd was so savage that even the great Selous, considered one of the best hunters of his day, had refused the assignment, claiming it impossible to take on the Addo elephants and live. It was a hairy few months, but Pretorius did accomplish the bloody though necessary deed.
Later, he was a pioneer in filmmaking to record the charges of dangerous game, particularly lions, which he killed mere feet in front of the camera’s lens.
By all accounts a very shy and modest man, Pretorius was only persuaded by a good friend, Mr. L. L. le Sueur of Johannesburg, to make notes of his fascinating life, which, although completed at the family farm at Nylstroom in July 1939, only saw print as Jungle Man in New York in 1948, nearly three years after his death in 1945 at the age of sixty-eight.
It’s been a long time since that sixteen-year-old boy began riding transport during the Matabele War, and very little is left of the rusting carcass of the Königsberg in her watery, jungle grave on the Rufiji. But the spirit of Pretorius and the other Good Ones is still out there, alive in every blue-tongued lick of a lonely camp fire, enshrined in the distant trumpet of a big tusker or the grunt of a dark-maned lion in the night. Don’t take my word for it; go out into the still-wild places of Africa and listen. Watch. He’s there, all right. But if you do happen onto Pretorius’ shade in person, do me a favor, will you?
Ask him what the hell P.J. stood for.
Patterson’s extraordinary lion trap, which used human bait and from which one of the man-eaters of Tsavo made an incredible escape.
The last of the Tsavo man-eaters, dead after taking ten bullets, stood almost four feet at the shoulder.
A warrior of the Dinka tribe, who ambushed and nearly wiped out Major C. H. Stigand’s force in 1919, spearing Stigand to death in the attack.
“Jungle Man” P. J. Pretorius, a one-man army fighting against the Germans in the First World War East African Campaign.
The legendary Tigrero Sasha Siemel received the charge of a jaguar on the blade of his Zagaya spear in Brazil’s “Green Hell”.
Sasha Siemel with two of his famous jaguar dogs. Left is Valente with whom he killed sixty-four tigres with spear, bow, and rifle.
Siemel with a male jaguar of about 300 pounds killed in a spear fight.
“Karamojo” Bell’s diagram of the most difficult angle for the elephant hunter, the quartering rear brain shot. No one else has ever mastered it.
Colonel Jim Corbett with the huge man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag, who slaughtered and ate 125 human beings.
The extraordinary hunter of man-eaters, Jim Corbett, with a gigantic male tiger known as the Bachelor of Rowalgarh.
Harry Wolhuter—this frail-looking but ramrod-tough game ranger stabbed a man-eating lion to death with his knife while being dragged away by the cat.
Samuel Baker’s own reconstruction of his terrifying encounter as a young man in Ceylon with a wounded Asian water buffalo.
The author after a hard day at the office.
Alexander “Sasha” Siemel
THE LONE HORSEMAN rode slowly through the afternoon heat, the first airborne waft of death fouling his nostrils from somewhere ahead in the towering grass of the pantanal. As he reined in, standing in the stirrups to see, the muffled, ghoulish croak of urubi vultures filtered through the stiff stalks, and one of the man’s following mongrels gave a low whine of fear. Instinctively, he slid the old muzzle-loading gun from its scabbard and checked the percussion cap seated over the nipple. Drawing back the hammer, his brown face set into a hard, swarthy mask, Jose Ramos touched the horse’s flanks. He knew what he would find.
By the sign, it had been early that morning, but by now the searing tropical sun of the western Brazilian Matto Grosso and the birds had nearly finished what the killer had begun. Lowering the gun, Jose Ramos watched the gorged vultures lumber off, their filth-smeared wings catching the air after a series of obscene hops. Dismounting, the vaquero inspected the gaping fang holes in the skull of the eyeless cow, recognizing them instantly. The heat of his fury chilled with the despair of realization. This was the thirteenth of the small herd to be slaughtered—and not even for food. It was a terrible loss for the little family trying to eke out a living in the vast and lonely Xarayes Marshes. If this devil cat was not killed, Jose Ramos knew that he and his wife and child would be ruined. If no one would help him, he would kill this demon himself. No matter that his gun was old and his dogs cowardly. Was he not a man? Si, this thing would be necessary, and so he would do it.
Remounting, he carried the muzzle loader in his right hand and whistled the cringing dogs forward on the heavy-scent trail that led away through the thick grass toward a capão, an island of tall buriti palms and strangler figs that loomed in emerald solitude above the grass five hundred meters away. As he rode toward the grove, two hard yellow eyes watched from the shady limb of a fig. As smoothly as poured oil, a tremendous male jaguar rippled to the ground and was swallowed up by the grassy undergrowth. In less than ten minutes, Maria Ramos would be a widow.
A single yelp of mortal pain sliced the shimmering heat like a sliver of broken glass. Ahead, somewhere in the thick grass, one of the cur dogs lay disemboweled, eyes already glazing as flies swarmed the torn, pink-gray ropes of intestines protruding from the huge gash in its side. The other dog broke cover and shot past the horseman in a brindled flash of tuck-tailed panic, disappearing quickly on the path home. Filho da puta, thought Jose Ramos. It had been so easy for the tigre. As he had done so many times before, the cat had simply looped back on his own trail and with a lightning lunge ambushed the dog, raking it with a pawstroke that could spurt the brains from a steer’s ears. Sweat beading on his sun-baked skin, the man gritted white teeth and urged the horse onward. If he went quickly he might get a shot, pray Sao Antonio will it.
The horse shied at the dog’s mutilated body, nostrils flaring at the smell of blood and offal. Ramos gave only a glance downward, his eyes probing the grass ahead for movement. Beyond, the capão and shorter cover would give better visibility. The horse broke into a clearing.
Jose Ramos was only a few steps into the opening, eyes darting for a glimpse of the tigre. Halting the horse, he dropped the reins to steady the gun with both hands. “Come out, demon,” his brain screamed, but he knew better than to shout aloud. He knew. It was watching him. He could feel the eyes, and a strange shiver scampered up his spine despite the awful heat.
And then it came. There was the smallest whisper of movement from his right rear, and a golden shape exploded out of the edge of the grass with terrifying speed. A numbing, stunning shock smashed Jose Ramos from the saddle, the gun, with its load of chopped nails, spinning away unfired. Dazed, on the ground, he started to raise himself to his knees, dully hearing the pounding of hooves as the horse hammered away in terror. Again, the impression of something huge and golden moving directly at him, very, very fast. There was no pain as the thick, hooked claws slashed through meat and sinew, red rivers welling in their wake. There was no pain as the big fangs drove deeply through the back of his skull.
There was nothing at all.
The body lay still, a huddled lump on its destroyed face. As the jaguar watched, fangs framed by bloodied black gums, the gore that had spurted from the ripped arteries ceased, thickening quickly in the hot sunshine. Cautiously, the big cat sniffed the corpse, unable to stifle a snarl of disgust at the familiar hated smell. Above, urubi were gathering, the first flapping noisily to light in the top of a buriti palm, others spiraling down to perch expectantly. With a soft series of grunts, the tigre stalked off to lie up in the shade. Assassino, the great cattle-marauding jaguar of the Xarayes Marshes, had become a man-killer.
It was full dawn before the terrified horse found its way back to the tiny fazenda (or ranch) of the Ramos family. Maria, haggard and emotionally exhausted from a night without sleep, ran outside to catch it, her heart tur
ning to lead as she saw the dark bloodstains on the rough wooden saddle and the two long claw marks on the horse’s flank. Swiftly, she mounted the tired horse and lashed him along the trail toward Ilha do Cara Cara and the camp of the famous tigrero, Senhor Siemel. He would not help before; perhaps he would now.
Of all the great hunter/adventurers of the recent past, none had a career in the wilderness that quite compared with that of Alexander “Sasha” Siemel. Every continent has had its great heroes of the hunt: Selous, Harris, Baker and dozens of others were the bright names of Africa; Corbett of India; “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Jim Bridger and Hugh Glass of the American West; each in his time, place and company left indelible evidence of the magnificence of the human spirit under stress. But South America? Since the days of the conquistadores, there have been few men in the field of hunting prominent enough to hang your sombrero on. That, to be sure, doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Most of the reason these men did not achieve the worldwide recognition of their counterparts is that either they never published or their works were not translated from Portuguese or Spanish. Sasha Siemel is the notable exception for more reasons than one. He alone of all the famous bushmen made his name and reputation not with the rifle, but with the bow and spear, hunting the most dangerous New World big cat as the aborigines had done for untold millennia.
Of course, there was nothing new about bow hunting at the time that Sasha Siemel was taking jaguars; white pioneers such as Howard Hill and the classic twosome of Pope and Young had all killed the most dangerous of big game with bow and arrow. The difference is that they didn’t do it as a steady diet for a living. One American cowboy, Buffalo Jones, even went to Africa to rope lions, which he managed successfully, but this cannot be considered as more than a sporting—although very brave and skillful—prank. It is the difference, however, between hunting with a bow and killing jaguars with a thrusting spear that set Sasha Siemel apart, in the opinion of many at the very top of the rank of the truly great hunters.
Death in the Silent Places Page 13