Green Hills of Africa

by Ernest Hemingway

could feel that I was getting the evening braggies but Pop and P.O.M,

  weren't here to listen. It was not nearly so satisfactory to brag when you

  could not be understood, still it was better than nothing. I definitely had

  the braggies, on beer, too.

  'Amazing,' I told the Roman. He went on with his own story. There was a

  little beer in the bottom of the bottle.

  'Old Man,' I said. 'Mzee.'

  'Yes, B'wana,' said the old man.

  'Here's some beer for you. You're old enough, so it can't hurt you.'

  I had seen the old man's eyes while he watched me drink and I knew he

  was another of the same. He took the bottle, drained it to the last bit of

  froth and crouched by his meat sticks holding the bottle lovingly.

  'More beer?' asked M'Cola.

  'Yes,' I said. 'And my cartridges.'

  The Roman had gone on steadily talking. He could tell a longer story

  even than Carlos in Cuba.

  'That's mighty interesting,' I told him. 'You're a hell of a fellow,

  too. We're both good. Listen.' M'Cola had brought the beer and my khaki coat

  with the cartridges in the pocket. I drank a little beer, noted the old man

  watching and spread out six cartridges. 'I've got the braggies,' I said.

  'You have to stand for this, look!' I touched each of the cartridges in

  turn, 'Simba, Simba, Faro, Nyati, Tendalla, Tendalla. What do you think of

  that? You don't have to believe it. Look, M'Cola!' and I named the six

  cartridges again. 'Lion, lion, rhino, buffalo, kudu, kudu.'

  'Ayee!' said the Roman excitedly.

  'N'Dio,' said M'Cola solemnly. 'Yes, it is true.'

  'Ayee!' said the Roman and grabbed me by the thumb.

  'God's truth,' I said. 'Highly improbable, isn't it?'

  'N'Dio,' said M'Cola, counting them over himself. 'Simba, Simba, Faro,

  Nyati, Tendalla, Tendalla!'

  'You can tell the others,' I said in English. 'That's a hell of a big

  piece of bragging. That'll hold me for to-night.'

  The Roman went on talking to me again and I listened carefully and ate

  another piece of the broiled liver. M'Cola was working on the heads now,

  skinning out one skull and showing Kamau how to skin out the easy part of

  the other. It was a big job to do for the two of them, working carefully

  around the eyes and the muzzle and the cartilage of the ears, and afterwards

  flesh all of the head skins so they would not spoil, and they were working

  at it very delicately and carefully in the firelight. I do not remember

  going to bed, nor if we went to bed.

  I remember getting the dictionary and asking M'Cola to ask the boy if

  he had a sister and M'Cola saying, 'No, No', to me very firmly and solemnly.

  'Nothing tendacious, you understand. Curiosity.'

  M'Cola was firm. 'No,' he said and shook his head. 'Hapana,' in the

  same tone he used when we followed the lion into the sanseviera that time.

  That disposed of the opportunities for social life and I looked up

  kidneys and the Roman's brother produced some from his lot and I put a piece

  between two pieces of liver on a stick and started it broiling.

  'Make an admirable breakfast,' I said out loud. 'Much better than

  mincemeat.'

  Then we had a long talk about sable. The Roman did not call them

  Tarahalla and that name meant nothing to him. There was some confusion about

  buffalo because the Roman kept saying 'nyati', but he meant they were black

  like the buff. Then we drew pictures in the dust of ashes from the fire and

  what he meant were sable all right. The horns curved back like scimitars,

  way back over their withers.

  'Bulls?' I said.

  'Bulls and cows.'

  With the old man and Garrick interpreting, I believed I made out that

  there were two herds.

  'To-morrow.'

  'Yes,' the Roman said. 'To-morrow.'

  ' 'Cola,' I said. 'To-day, kudu. To-morrow, sable, buffalo, Simba.'

  'Hapana, buffalo!' he said and shook his head. 'Hapana, Simba!'

  'Me and the Wanderobo-Masai buffalo,' I said. 'Yes,' said the

  Wanderobo-Masai excitedly. 'Yes.'

  'There are very big elephants near here,' Garrick said. 'To-morrow,

  elephants,' I said, teasing M'Cola. 'Hapana elephants!' He knew it was

  teasing but he did not even want to hear it said.

  'Elephants,' I said. 'Buffalo, Simba, leopard.'

  The Wanderobo-Masai was nodding excitedly. 'Rhino,' he put in.

  'Hapana!' M'Cola said shaking his head. He was beginning to suffer.

  'In those hills many buffalo,' the old man interpreted for the now very

  excited Roman who was standing and pointing beyond where the huts were.

  'Hapana! Hapana! Hapana!' M'Cola said definitely and finally. 'More

  beer?' putting down his knife.

  'All right,' I said. 'I'm just kidding you.' M'Cola was crouched close

  talking, making an explanation. I heard Pop's title and I thought it was

  that Pop would not like it. That Pop would not want it.

  'I was just kidding you,' I said in English. Then in Swahili,

  'To-morrow, sable?'

  'Yes,' he said feelingly. 'Yes.'

  After that the Roman and I had a long talk in which I spoke Spanish and

  he spoke whatever it was he spoke and I believe we planned the entire

  campaign for the next day.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I do not remember going to bed nor getting up, only being by the fire

  in the grey before daylight, with a tin cup of hot tea in my hand and my

  breakfast, on the stick, not looking nearly so admirable and very over-blown

  with ashes. The Roman was standing making an oration with gestures in the

  direction where the light was beginning to show and I remember wondering if

  the bastard had talked all night.

  The head skins were all spread and neatly salted and the skulls with

  the horns were leaning against the log and stick house. M'Cola was folding

  the head skins. Kamau brought me the tins and I told him to open one of

  fruit. It was cold from the night and the mixed fruit and the cold syrupy

  juice sucked down smoothly. I drank another cup of tea, went in the tent,

  dressed, put on my dry boots and we were ready to start. The Roman had said

  we would be back before lunch.

  We had the Roman's brother as guide. The Roman was going, as near as I

  could make out, to spy on one of the herds of sable and we were going to

  locate the other. We started out with the brother ahead, wearing a toga and

  carrying a spear, then me with the Springfield slung and my small Zeiss

  glasses in my pocket, then M'Cola with Pop's glasses, slung on one side,

  water canteen on the other, skinning knife, whetstone, extra box of

  cartridges, and cakes of chocolates in his pockets, and the big gun over his

  shoulder, then the old man with the Graflex, Garrick with the movie camera,

  and the Wanderobo-Masai with a spear and bow and arrows.

  We said good-bye to the Roman and started out of the thorn-bush fence

  ju
st as the sun came through the gap in the hills and shone on the

  cornfield, the huts and the blue hills beyond. It promised to be a fine

  clear day.

  The brother led the way through some heavy brush that soaked us all;

  then through the open forest, then steeply uphill until we were well up on

  the slope that rose behind the edge of the field where we were camped. Then

  we were on a good smooth trail that graded back into these hills above which

  the sun had not yet risen. I was enjoying the early morning, still a little

  sleepy, going along a little mechanically and starting to think that we were

  a very big outfit to hunt quietly, although everyone seemed to move quietly

  enough, when we saw two people coming towards us.

  They were a tall, good-looking man with features like the Roman's, but

  slightly less noble, wearing a toga and carrying a bow and quiver of arrows,

  and behind him, his wife, very pretty, very modest, very wifely, wearing a

  garment of brown tanned skins and neck ornament of concentric copper wire

  circles and many wire circles on her arms and ankles. We halted, said

  'Jambo', and the brother talked to this seeming tribesman who had the air of

  a business man on the way to his office in the city and, as they spoke in

  rapid question and answer, I watched the most freshly brideful wife who

  stood a little in profile so that I saw her pretty pear-shaped breasts and

  the long, clean niggery legs and was studying her pleasant profile most

  profitably until her husband spoke to her suddenly and sharply, then in

  explanation and quiet command, and she moved around us, her eyes down, and

  went on along the trail that we had come, alone, we all watching her. The

  husband was going on with us, it seemed. He had seen the sable that morning

  and, slightly suspicious, obviously displeased at leaving that now

  out-of-sight wife of wives that we all had taken with our eyes, he led us

  off and to the right along another trail, well-worn and smooth, through

  woods that looked like fall at home and where you might expect to flush a

  grouse and have him whirr off to the other hill or pitch down in the valley.

  So, sure enough we put up partridges and, watching them fly, I was

  thinking all the country in the world is the same country and all hunters

  are the same people. Then we saw a fresh kudu track beside the trail and

  then, as we moved through the early morning woods, no undergrowth now, the

  first sun coming through the tops of the trees, we came on the ever miracle

  of elephant tracks, each one as big around as the circle you make with your

  arms putting your hands together, and sunk a foot deep in the loam of the

  forest floor, where some bull had passed, travelling after rain. Looking at

  the way the tracks graded down through the pleasant forest I thought that we

  had the mammoths too, a long time ago, and when they travelled through the

  hills in southern Illinois they made these same tracks. It was just that we

  were an older country in America and the biggest game was gone.

  We kept along the face of this hill on a pleasant sort of jutting

  plateau and then came out to the edge of the hill where there was a valley

  and a long open meadow with timber on the far side and a circle of hills at

  its upper end where another valley went off to the left. We stood in the

  edge of the timber on the face of this hill looking across the meadow valley

  which extended to the open out in a steep sort of grassy basin at the upper

  end where it was backed by the hills. To our left there were steep, rounded,

  wooded hills, with outcroppings of limestone rock that ran, from where we

  stood, up to the very head of the valley, and there formed part of the other

  range of hills that headed it. Below us, to the right, the country was rough

  and broken in hills and stretches of meadow and then a steep fall of timber

  that ran to the blue hills we had seen to the westward beyond the huts where

  the Roman and his family lived. I judged camp to be straight down below us

  and about five miles to the north-west through the timber.

  The husband was standing, talking to the brother and gesturing and

  pointing out that he had seen the sable feeding on the opposite side of the

  meadow valley and that they must have fed either up or down the valley. We

  sat in the shelter of the trees and sent the Wanderobo-Masai down into the

  valley to look for tracks. He came back and reported there were no tracks

  leading down the valley below us and to the westward, so we knew they had

  fed on up the meadow valley.

  Now the problem was to so use the terrain that we might locate them,

  and get up and into range of them without being seen. The sun was coming

  over the hills at the head of the valley and shone on us while everything at

  the head of the valley was in heavy shadow. I told the outfit to stay where

  they were in the woods, except for M'Cola and the husband who would go with

  me, we keeping in the timber and grading up our side of the valley until we

  could be above and see into the pocket of the curve at the upper end to

  glass it for the sable.

  You ask how this was discussed, worked out, and understood with the bar

  of language, and I say it was as freely discussed and clearly understood as

  though we were a cavalry patrol all speaking the same language. We were all

  hunters except, possibly, Garrick, and the whole thing could be worked out,

  understood, and agreed to without using anything but a forefinger to signal

  and a hand to caution. We left them and worked very carefully ahead, well

  back in the timber to get height. Then, when we were far enough up and

  along, we crawled out on to a rocky place and, being behind rock, shielding

  the glasses with my hat so they would not reflect the sun, M'Cola nodding

  and grunting as he saw the practicability of that, we glassed the opposite

  side of the meadow around the edge of the timber, and up into the pocket at

  the head of the valley; and there they were. M'Cola saw them just before I

  did and pulled my sleeve.

  'N'Dio,' I said. Then I held my breath to watch them. All looked very

  black, big necked, and heavy. All had the back-curving horns. They were a

  long way away. Some were lying down. One was standing. We could see seven.

  'Where's the bull?' I whispered.

  M'Cola motioned with his left hand and counted four fingers. It was one

  of those lying down in the tall grass and the animal did look much bigger

  and the horns much more sweeping. But we were looking into the morning sun

  and it was hard to see well. Behind them a sort of gully ran up into the

  hill that blocked the end of the valley.

  Now we knew what we had to do. We must go back, cross the meadow far

  enough down so we were out of sight, get into the timber on the far side and

  work along through the timber to get above the sable. First we must try to

  make sure there were no more of them in the timber or the meadow that we

  must work through before we made our stalk.


  I wet my finger and put it up. From the cool side it seemed as though

  the breeze came down the valley. M'Cola took some dead leaves and crumpled

  them and tossed them up. They fell a little toward us. The wind was all

  right and now we must glass the edge of the timber and check on it.

  'Hapana,' M'Cola said finally. I had seen nothing either and my eyes

  ached from the pull of the eight-power glasses. We could take a chance on

  the timber. We might jump something and spook the sable but we had to take

  that chance to get around and above them.

  We made our way back and down and told the others. From where they were

  we could cross the valley out of sight of its upper end and bending low, me

  with {my} hat off, we headed down into the high meadow grass and across the

  deeply cut watercourse that ran down through the centre of the meadow,

  across its rocky shelf, and up the grassy bank on the other side, keeping

  under the edge of a fold of the valley into the shelter of the woods. Then

  we headed up through the woods, crouched, in single file, to try to get

  above the sable.

  We went forward making as good time as we could and still move quietly.

  I had made too many stalks on big horn sheep only to find them fed away and

  out of sight when you came round the shoulder of the mountain to trust these

  sable to stay where they were and, since once we were in the timber we could

  no longer see them, I thought it was important that we come up above them as

  fast as we could without getting me too blown and shaky for the shooting.

  M'Cola's water bottle made a noise against the cartridges in his pocket

  and I stopped and had him pass it to the Wanderobo-Masai. It seemed too many

  people to be hunting with, but they all moved quietly as snakes, and I was

  over-confident anyway. I was sure the sable could not see us in the forest,

  nor wind us.

  Finally I was certain we were above them and that they must be ahead of

  us, and past where the sun was shining in a thinning of the forest, and

  below us, under the edge of the hill, I checked on the aperture in the sight

  being clean, cleaned my glasses and wiped the sweat from my forehead

  remembering to put the used handkerchief in my left pocket so I would not

  fog my glasses wiping them with it again. M'Cola and I and the husband

  started to work our way to the edge of the timber; finally crawling almost

  to the edge of the ridge. There were still some trees between us and the

  open meadow below and we were behind a small bush and a fallen tree when,

  raising our heads, we could see them in the grassy open, about three hundred

  yards away, showing big and very dark in the shadow. Between us was

  scattered open timber full of sunlight and the openness of the gulch. As we

  watched two got to their feet and seemed to be standing looking at us. The

  shot was possible but it was too long to be certain and as I lay, watching,

  I felt somebody touch me on the arm and Garrick, who had crawled up,

  whispered throatily, 'Piga! Piga, B'wana! Doumi! Doumi!' saying to shoot,

  that it was a bull. I glanced back and there were the whole outfit on their

  bellies or hands and knees, the Wanderobo-Masai shaking like a bird dog. I

  was furious and motioned them all down.

  So that was a bull, eh, well there was a much bigger bull that M'Cola

  and I had seen lying down. The two sable were watching us and I dropped my

  head, I thought they might be getting a flash from my glasses. When I looked

  up again, very slowly, I shaded my eyes with my hand. The two sable had

  stopped looking and were feeding. But one looked up again nervously and I

  saw the dark, heavy-built antelope with scimitar-like horns swung back

  staring at us.

  I had never seen a sable. I knew nothing about them, neither whether

  their eyesight was keen, like a ram who sees you at whatever distance you

  see him, or like a bull elk who cannot see you at two hundred yards unless