We picked up the early-morning spoor of the bull and followed it across an open dambo into a patch of scrub and thorn. The big bull had moved slowly, casually, pausing frequently to graze from the fresh clumps of green grass sprouting from the black patches of a bush fire some weeks old. Once, he had stopped to rub against a sapling, the core of dried mud from his morning wallowing still slightly damp, despite the midday heat.
Ahead was a tallish mopane tree with some lower branches. I lay the spear on the ground and silently climbed fifteen feet up the tree. I could see about one hundred yards, probing the mottled tangles for movement. At first, he was invisible in the shadows, although I realized with a start that I had been looking right at him forty yards away. Then he flicked a thorn-torn, ragged ear to dislodge a fly, and his black-gray bulk began to take shape. I hand-signaled to Ian and slithered down the tree. We planned the stalk by scratching with sticks on a clear spot of ground, and I indicated to him the tops of the bushes where the bull was standing.
I crawled through the cover an inch at a time, sliding the spear quietly ahead, laying it down, then creeping up to it for another move forward. I kept my eyes on the bush where the bull stood, trying to picture him, listening for any possible change in his position—such as directly at me in a flat-out charge. After twenty-five yards, I could make out his hind quarters and his rear legs, the dung-matted tail flipping only a few feet from where I had first seen him. He was fifteen yards away now, still facing three-quarters away from me.
There was one light screen of bush between us as I slowly rose into a crouch. My legs ached from the slow-motion change of my position, and the spear felt tiny in my wet hand. I struggled to fight down that odd choking sensation, the mixture of terror and exhilaration that we all know who put ourselves in harm’s way for the sake of the experience itself. I felt as if every drop of my strength had leaked out and soaked into the hard ground, positive I could have lit a blue-tip kitchen match on the dry surface of my tongue.
One more step, and I would be clear for the throw. I stole a glance at the curved beauty of the spearhead, the forge marks and tiny striations along the cutting edge where the whetstone had licked it. I gripped the knobby shaft tightly, mentally talking to myself. Easy, now … wait until the angle’s right. He’s coming a little more broadside. Take it cool. Wait. Wait. That’s a nice moo-cow, one more little step. Okay. Raise the spear very slowly, or he’ll see the movement. Very nice.
Now! I whipped the blade forward with every fiber of my body and saw it flash through a shaft of sun, winging dead-on into the center of that black, muscular shoulder, driving well past the point, almost a foot of the shaft slicing deep. There was a dull, meaty thug! and a screek! as the steel scraped on rib bone. A wild thrill of victory surged through me as I instantly turned to run for a tree to my right. It turned to numb fear as I caught my foot on something, and the ground came up to belt me in the face.
The bull gave a screaming, wet bawl and spun toward me, a gush of claret blood pouring from his nostrils and open mouth. In an instant, I was back on my feet, running faster than I had ever thought possible, the dirt and leaves flashing away beneath me, the steady thudding of the hooves louder and louder just behind my back. In that second, I knew I wasn’t going to make it.
There was a deafening bang and the whock of a big bullet slapping meat, but the hooves were still there, even closer. I jinked to one side as the .458 slammed again, and there was a crashing sound like a tree falling. Ian had gotten the bull before it had gotten me.
The buffalo lay on his right side, the spear shaft jutting stiffly from his lung area. Six inches above the spear wound was a white-edged hole where Ian’s second shot had broken the bull’s spine, dropping him as dead as chastity in his tracks, which were at the time about one yard short of my tracks when my feet were still in them. He was dead, and I was alive. That seemed a pretty pleasant proposition at the time, and still is.
Ian walked up, his hands fumbling for a cigarette. He started to say something but gave up on the second try, just shaking his head. After examining the bull in silence and tying my bush jacket (having wrung it out) to the carcass to keep off vultures until the staff could come and butcher it, we went back to the Rover and drove home. Back at camp, Martin had a couple of tall ones waiting, with several to follow.
Drawing a reasonably normal breath, I looked at Ian and said, “Guess you know that it really doesn’t count.” He looked at me incredulously.
Gaping, he managed, “What the bloody hell do you mean it bloody well doesn’t count? You got him, didn’t you?”
“Nope. You did. It’s against the rules, old chappie, though I’m mighty glad you broke them. Same as in archery; you have to make your kill unaided. Same thing should apply to spear hunting, seems to me. Rules, you know. Playing fields of Eton and all that.”
Although I had made the stalk successfully and gotten in a throw that would obviously have killed the buff in a matter of a few minutes at most, I still couldn’t claim that I had killed a Cape buffalo with a spear single-handedly. In fact, if Ian hadn’t dropped him cold with that spine shot, my hash would have been rather thoroughly settled in about another half-second.
“What the hell,” Ian snorted. “You did what you wanted to do—prove that a man could kill a buff with a spear. As it is, you’re bloody lucky I was able to spine him, or we’d be grooming your receding hairline with a shovel right about now. Whaddya want? An egg in your beer?”
I took another long pull at the frosty mug and thought about it. No, I did not want an egg in my beer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, S. W. Esq. The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1854.
Wolhuter, Harry. Memories of a Game Ranger. Johannesburg: The Wildlife Protection Society of South Africa, 1948.
Author’s Note
MANY OF THE MORE REMOTE PLACE names in this book were, at the times of the various actions, improperly spelled by the characters in the light of modern usage. Normally, the reason for this was the fact that they were interpreted phonetically from a wide variety of unwritten native languages. Further, the names of some individuals mentioned peripherally are spelled according to the most common modern custom. For example, Frederick Courteney Selous is insisted to be Frederick Courtenay Selous by his biographer, Millais. Both William Cornwallis Harris and Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, pioneer hunters, are commonly given hyphenated names. To further confuse the issue, a good many sources maintain that Cumming’s first name was, in fact, Ronaleyn. Take your choice.
by the same author
Death in the Long Grass
PETER HATHAWAY CAPSTICK
Already recognized as a master of adventure writing for his classic Death in the Long Grass, former big-game hunter Capstick now turns from his own exploits to those of some of the greatest hunters of the past. With his characteristic color and flair he recalls the extraordinary careers of men like Colonel J. H. Patterson and Colonel Jim Corbett, who stalked legendary man-eaters through the silent darkness on opposite sides of the world; men like Karamojo Bell, acknowledged as the greatest elephant hunter of all time, men like the valiant Sasha Siemel, who tracked killer jaguars through the Matto Grosso armed only with a spear. With an authenticity gained by having shared the experiences he writes of, Peter Capstick eloquently recreates the acrid taste of terror in the mouth of a man whose gun has jammed as a lion begins his charge, the exhilaration of tracking and finding a longsought prey the bravery and even nobility of performing under circumstances of primitive and savage stress with death all around in the silent places of the wilderness.
Richard Mason
Peter Hathaway Capstick grew up in rural new Jersey and soon learned to love the outdoors and wildlife. After a career on Wall Street he decided to heed his sense of adventure and became a professional hunter, first in the rain forest of Latin America and then in Central Africa. Peter Capstick has long made his home in Africa, the source of his inspiration.
Critical acclaim for Death in the Long Grass
"Few writers have matched Capstick’s flair for describing the hunt … in gruesome, realistic terms … . A page-turner that is absolutely spine-tingling."
—Publishers Weekly
"This book had me on the edge of my seat … . 297 pages of spine-tingling yarns."
—New York Times Book Review
"Death in the Long Grass is an exciting book, superbly written."
—Guns & Ammo
"Capstick … is brilliant in his description of his hunts for some of Africa’s most vicious killers … . The terror produced by some of these pieces is almost too real. As the pages turn, breathing grows shallow, adrenalin is pumped into the veins, the palms sweat until the outcome is resolved and there is time to drag a handkerchief across a damp brow."
—Chicago Sun-Times (Triple Recommendation Rating)
"Death in the Long Grass will excite you, scare you and make you laugh … . as a source of information it surpasses itself, and as a narrative it will hold the reader spellbound … ."
—Guns Magazine
Copyright © 1981 by Peter Hathaway Capstick
For information, write: St. Martin’s Press,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Design by Dennis J. Grastorf
eISBN 9781466803947
First eBook Edition : October 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Capstick, Peter Hathaway.
Death in the silent places.
1. Big game hunting. I. Title.
SK33.C34 799.2’6’0922 80-29284
Death in the Silent Places Page 29