With no cover to mask their stalk, the Bakers were seen immediately, the herd coming to its feet and staring at them in astonishment. Forming a close rank studded with seven huge herd bulls in the forefront, the buffalo stood watching nervously as the brothers ran forward. When the men got to within thirty yards, one of the bulls feinted a charge, then angled off, exposing his shoulder twenty paces away. Twin shots rocked the tranquil plain as both men fired together, the old bull dropping to his knees with a smashed shoulder blade. In a moment, however, he was back up, hobbling out into the lake on three legs.
As the Bakers were lining up the wounded bull for a second broadside, a very odd thing happened. With a ferocious grunt, one of the other bulls began a full charge at the crippled one, catching him squarely on the side with awful force. The wounded animal was knocked into a heap and lay there, unable to get up, while his attacker wandered nonchalantly off across the plain.
Leaving James to finish off the dying buff, Sam took after the second. It was exasperating. At an easy canter, the bull would cover a hundred yards and haul up, letting Baker come just to the edge of the smoothbore’s range before repeating the performance. For a mile, this continued, the hunter muttering anatomical impossibilities at the buffalo as he panted along behind until firing a long, missed shot in sheer disgust. Loading his last spare solid ball, he took up the frustrating chase again.
At the juncture of the lake and a creek flowing onto the plain, the bull turned at an angle and permitted Baker to “cut the corner” on him. Running as fast as he could, Sam was within thirty yards before the bull walked into the creek and started to swim across its sixty-yard width. Skirting around the mouth of the stream, Baker made it to the point on the opposite shore where the buff would emerge, and he waded out into the knee-deep shallows to intercept him. Just as he got there, the big, wide-horned bull swam out of the main channel and, surprised, stood looking at Baker from fifteen yards away.
Chuckling to himself, absolutely certain he could obliterate the bull with his first shot, Sam Baker permitted himself a mental pat on the back. With a steady aim at the point where the deep chest met the massive neck, he squeezed off the first barrel, the white burst of powder smoke drifting to the side so he could see the ball impact on the wet, rubbery hide. It was spot-on, and a thick stream of blood started to run from the wound and drip into the water. But there seemed to be some sort of misunderstanding; instead of crumpling up and falling in an explosion of watery spray, the buffalo did absolutely nothing. There was not a sound, not even a twitch of pig-iron muscle from the shot. The only difference Baker noticed, with an uneasy feeling, was in the bull’s eyes. Previously dull and sullen, they had almost magically taken on a gleaming glow of pure fury. Better play it again, Sam. Shaken by the lack of effect of the first shot, Baker squinted down the twin tubes of the shotgun and loosed another ball at the bleeding wound. The thumping echo of the report rolled across the lake, but, except for a heavier blood flow and a darker glint in the bull’s eyes, the results were the same. Astounded and now frightened, Samuel White Baker stood knee-high in bloody water with an empty gun and no more ammunition. With a ridiculous gesture, he drew his sheath knife. It would be about as effective on the more than a ton of horned fury as a pair of cuticle scissors. It was now the buffalo’s turn, and, knowing that to retreat would bring a sure charge, Baker started giving some thought to what he had better do next.
James was roughly a mile away, back at the body of the first bull, but possibly Sam could get his attention with a whistle. Putting his fingers to his tongue, he cut loose with a piercing warble used to call his staghounds home in Scotland. The irate buffalo did not appear partial to the serenade, because, having rumbled to within ten yards of Baker, he now reduced this distance to less than twenty feet. Pawing the pink water with cloven hooves the size of mattock heads while grunting lustily, the bull had the definite, undivided attention of Sam Baker.
An idea began to take shape in Baker’s numbed brain. If he was out of lead balls, why not use something else? But what? With his eyes still on the bull, willing him to delay his charge, he tore off a scrap of his shirt and, blindly digging through his pouch, discovered a half-dozen sixpence coins and two smaller anna pieces (local money for paying coolies). As fast as his fumbling fingers could manage it, he poured a double charge of powder down the right-hand barrel of the shotgun and, wrapping the coins tightly in the cloth, rammed them down the bore. As he was doing this, the bull sprang forward again so quickly that Baker only had time to jerk out the ramrod and let it fall into the water before he got a cap on the nipple and cocked the hammer. The bull stopped again, practically close enough to touch.
It was a different Sam Baker awaiting the charge he knew must come; not properly armed, but at least with some possible defense. He knew that he would have to wait until literally the last foot, perhaps even placing the muzzle of the gun on the buffalo’s forehead for the improvised load to be effective. As the weird confrontation continued, Baker was startled to hear the splash of water behind him and a gasping of breath that proved to be his brother. He had heard the whistle and run the mile as fast as he could. Sam dared not look away from the buff but listened as James explained that he had only one loaded barrel and no more ammo. Sam gave instructions that James should hold his fire until the buffalo was almost on him and then shoot for the head. The words had barely cleared his lips when the exhausting tension came to an abrupt end. The bull lowered his massive head and charged straight at Sam.
James fired. His bullet had no effect as the bull hurtled onto his brother. In the second the buffalo was about to make contact, the horn tips actually on either side of Sam’s body, Sam pulled the trigger with the muzzle almost touching the bull’s head. With a deafening crash, the double-powder charge careened the package of small change down the smooth barrel and onto the bull’s skull, knocking him cold, stopping him in his tracks as if he’d come up short at the end of a steamship hawser. The Baker brothers didn’t hang around to see how badly he was hit. All vestige of Victorian reserve by now forgotten, they ran for their lives across the plain for the only cover, a big fallen tree about a half-mile away. After a very active first hundred yards, they turned to see what had happened to the bull. With a thrill of fright, the Bakers saw that he had regained his feet and was coming after them; not fast, but in a most determined manner. He was game, but nothing less than an elephant could have withstood the impact of such a violent collision with Victoria Regina’s profile at point-blank range without developing a very advanced migraine. As obvious waves of dizziness swept the bull, he would lose his balance and fall, only to get back up and keep coming. The brothers reached the tree just as the bull collapsed two hundred yards behind them, seemingly unable to regain its feet. Sneaking into the jungle, Sam and James were able to make their way back to their horses.
Continuing on to Minneria village, three miles from the lake, the hunters met their porters and set up camp for the night. At dawn, Sam Baker was back on the plain with his trusty quarter-pounder 4-bore, but of the buffalo, nothing was ever found.
I would have to admit that I stand corrected with reference to my observation in Death in the Long Grass that “the only sure way to stop a charging buffalo is to take away his credit card.” Sam Baker clearly proved that there are times when cash is definitely preferable.
Of all the groups of men who have contributed to the land and wildlife of Africa, none come to mind more deserving of praise, or having received less, than those—black and white—who have devoted their careers and often their actual lives to serving the many game departments. As they have found—these wardens of one rank or another, scouts, rangers, control and cropping officers—there are few jobs less financially rewarding on the one hand; on the other, few more frustrating microcosms of bureaucratic pecking order and red tape. As an ex-cropping officer, thinning overpopulated elephant and buffalo herds in central Africa, I believe I know of what I speak. But then, most will tell you that the
re are a lot of ways to get paid … .
The early game officers—to generalize a title—were an especially harassed little band, dealing as they had to with an ecologically ignorant public, poachers, low-priority status from the governments and even lower budgets. Many of their lives were tragic existences marked by malaria, heat, cold, drought, locusts and tsetse fly, endless petty reports, loneliness, alcoholism and broken marriages. And, too, there were the animals.
A record of the close calls and fatalities that have befallen game officers in Africa could likely fill several books this size, yet it is not arbitrarily that the incredible story of a night in the life of Harry Wolhuter, a South African game ranger, has been selected. As a classic tale of man the hunted, it has few equals.
Wolhuter was a veteran of one of the most colorful British regular outfits of the Boer War, a crackpot command known as Steinacker’s Horse for its feisty, bantam-cock leader. Shortly after the war, the Sabi Game Reserve—now the Kruger National Park—came under the wardenship of the well-known administrator, naturalist and author, Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton. Needing help from someone qualified as a hunter, as well as familiar with the terrain, the warden chose Harry Wolhuter as ranger, since much of Harry’s time during the war had been spent in the area.
It was a cool winter day in August of 1903 in the Sabi Reserve, and Wolhuter was returning from a patrol on the Olifants River on horseback. With him were three black reserve police, some pack donkeys-and three dogs, traveling to a water hole where Harry had planned on spending that night. Since the police were driving the donkeys and not mounted, Wolhuter decided to go ahead to the water hole while they followed behind. Although dusk was falling quickly, the ranger gave no particular thought to making the trip at night; he had often done so during the war to escape the summer heat. With him went one of the dogs, a big male named Bull, trotting alongside the horse as the path led over burned ground studded with occasional patches of tall, dried grass.
After six miles, as he rode through one of these patches of grass, Wolhuter heard two animals jump up in the darkness ahead of his horse. Supposing them to be reedbuck, which were common here, he expected them to run up the path and away, and was surprised when the rustling sounds seemed to be coming nearer. Still not alarmed, he kept riding slowly along until he could see two forms looming through the blackness ten feet away. They were not reedbuck. They were two male lions, and they were crouched to spring.
With no time to raise his rifle, Wolhuter jerked his horse around and gave him the spurs. Too late; there was a terrific shock as a lion jumped onto the horse’s rump, hitting the ranger a strong blow on the back. Rearing up in pain and terror, the horse dislodged both the lion and Harry, the latter falling over his mount’s right shoulder and almost on top of the second cat, which was rushing in to grab the horse by the throat. This hardly sounds like a marvelous piece of luck, but, in fact, it was; instead of closing his jaws on the man’s head, the lion instead sank his teeth into Harry’s right shoulder and started to haul him off, his legs and back dragging on the ground under the lion’s body. The horse clattered away, chased by the first lion, who was himself chased by the dog.
Harry Wolhuter had plenty to think about as the cat straddled him, dragging him along easily, each step cutting his arms deeply with the lion’s dew-claws. Wearing stout spurs, Harry tried to dig them into the ground to act as brakes, but at the resistance, the man-eater just jerked his head, causing pain so unbearable that Wolhuter gave up trying to slow him down. As has been discussed, reports vary widely from survivors of lion or other big cat attacks as to the pain experienced at the actual time of the mauling. David Livingstone wrote at considerable length of his sensations while being chewed by a wounded lion, saying that there was no pain at all, just a kind of numb shock. Other men I have known who have come out on the tattered but alive side of a lion encounter say the agony was excruciating. Wolhuter not only claimed great physical pain, but a horrible, growing terror that the lion would begin to eat him without bothering to kill him first. In any case, he had given himself up for dead, although not necessarily without a fight.
As the lion continued to pull him in agony across the rough ground toward a nearby spruit, Harry suddenly happened to think of his belt knife, kept in a sheath on his right hip. His right arm and shoulder gripped in the savage vice of fangs, his face pulled tightly into the lion’s rank-smelling mane, he listened to the rumble of the animal’s purring as he tried to figure out a way to reach the blade. Slipping his left arm awkwardly behind his back, he didn’t really expect to find the knife in its sheath; it was loose-fitting and had dropped out several times when he had been thrown from his horse during the war. Despite the aerobatics he had been through, to his intense joy his fingers touched the cool, hard-wood of the hilt, and he withdrew it. Great! But what the hell does he do now?
Wolhuter remembered having read somewhere (rather an esoteric bit of information, considering that he was actually in a lion’s mouth on his way to dinner!) that if a cat is punched in the nose, he is forced to sneeze before doing anything else. What would happen were he to stick the lion in the snoot with the knife? Even though the theory is not correct, he dismissed the notion on the sound reasoning that if the lion did drop him, he would probably pick him up again, possibly with a fatal bite. On the basis that he couldn’t very well be worse off, he decided to go for the heart.
Easier decided than done. The blade being an ordinary butcher-type “sticking” knife, with a six-inch cutting edge and no quillion, or guard, Harry reckoned that he would have to stab the left shoulder to be able to reach the heart, although it would have been a cinch to stick the cat through the right side, which was directly above his left hand. Without the use of his right hand or arm, he had to reach very carefully across his own chest and feel for the spot where the heart lay. He found it. With a quick backhand thrust, he struck, driving the blade as deeply as he could through the tawny hide. A second time the bloody blade flickered in the starlight. A terrible roar erupted as the cat dropped him, and Harry slashed for the throat above. A torrent of hot, sticky blood poured over Wolhuter as the steel flashed and bit, the lion slinking away into the surrounding blackness.
Not having any idea how badly the man-eater was hurt, Harry staggered to his feet and, in hopes of frightening him off, shouted some very uncomplimentary things at the nearby location of a series of moans. And then he remembered. There were two lions! The first one would be unlikely to catch the horse and would return any second to find him hurt and helpless, except for the knife. His rifle had been lost when he fell and was invisible in the long grass. With his good hand, he fished out his matchbox with the idea of lighting the grass to keep away the other lion. Because of the tooth wounds, as well as several tendons in his right wrist severed by the talons like broken rubber bands, he had to hold the blood-spattered box in his teeth and strike with his left hand. I believe it safe to surmise he was not overly concerned about striking without closing cover … . But the grass was too damp with dew to burn anyway, and Harry gave it up, looking for a tree he could climb.
With the use of only one arm and weak with blood loss, this posed quite a project. But at last he found one with a low fork and managed to climb in agony about twelve feet up to a thick branch. In worse shape from the chilling effect of the night wind over his dew- and gore-soaked clothing, he was desperately cold and dizzy, the continuous heavy bleeding from his ripped shoulder making him fear he would pass out and fall. Somehow he strapped himself to the branch with his belt and, suffering from pain and a raging, burning thirst, began the vigil for his three men with the donkeys, who should be passing soon. The lion, which had been grunting and growling nearby all this time, at last gave a long, drawn-out gargle and was still.
Harry’s satisfaction at having killed the lion lasted only a few moments; he heard the grass rustle with the approach of the other big male. Unable to catch the horse, the lion was smelling at the place where Wolhuter had stabbed his pal a
nd was now padding along the blood trail, sniffing his way loudly to Harry’s tree. With mounting terror, Wolhuter listened to him closer and closer, until the lion stopped at the base of the tree. A jolt of terror welled up over his pain when Harry felt the tree shake with the weight of the big cat. He was coming up! If it was so easy to climb that a weakened, one-armed man could manage it, then what impediment would it be for a determined, healthy man-eating lion? With the starlight glimmering in the lion’s eyes only a few feet away, Wolhuter shouted at it as loudly as he could.
At this crucial moment, there was another sound in the grass, and Harry was overjoyed to hear the harsh bark of the dog, Bull. Having discovered his master was not aboard the horse, he had returned to find the man. Harry sicked him on the lion, and the big Boer dog harried the cat from the tree, only to have him return again and again, each time more determined.
This went on for about an hour, until Wolhuter heard the sound of tin dishes rattling in the head bundle of one of his men some way down the path. Wolhuter shouted a warning to the native and heard the pack crash to the ground. When asked if he was in a tall tree, the African replied that it wasn’t so tall, but he didn’t think he would come down and look for a better one. A while later, the other men and the animals came up, Wolhuter calling to them to fire some shots and build a fire to keep off the lion, which they did. The man-eater stayed in the shadows but did not run away. Getting their Baas down from the tree in his stiffened, painful condition wasn’t easy but was finally accomplished.
Even more than the pain of his wounds, Wolhuter suffered from the growing torture of thirst. His men had no water with them, and, since the next pool—for which they had been headed originally—was still six miles away, they began walking at once. Arriving exhausted, Harry was distressed to find that it, too, was dry. There were some old huts at the water hole, left over from the war, and he determined to wait there while his men went to find water anywhere they could. Without a good drink soon, not having had a drop since the day before, Wolhuter knew he would die. At last, after several hours, two of his men returned with a horse’s nosebag half-full of a filthy, stinking mixture which was, at least, wet. Harry drank almost all of it, leaving just a bit for his men to clean off his wounds. This process, however, was so unbearably painful that he simply couldn’t stand it, and he lay awake all night, much of it with his mangled arm strapped to a hut pole in hope of relieving the agony. It was to no avail.
Death in the Silent Places Page 27