True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  “No. But you and your mob are all mixed up too.”

  “I know it.”

  “But do you have it straight in your head yourself, really?”

  “Not yet. We’re on a day-by-day basis now.”

  “Well, I like it anyway,” Mary said. “And after all we didn’t come out here to bring order into Africa.”

  “No. We came out to take some pictures and write some captions for them and then to have fun and learn what we could.”

  “But we certainly got mixed up in it.”

  “I know. But are you having fun?”

  “I’ve never been happier.”

  Ngui had stopped and was pointing at the right-hand side of the road. “Simba.”

  There was the big track, too big to believe.

  The left hind foot clearly showed the old scar. He had crossed the road quietly more or less at the time Mary had shot the buck. He had gone on into the broken bush country.

  “Him,” Ngui said. There was no doubt of it at all. With luck we could have met him on the road. But he would have been careful and let us pass. He was a very intelligent and unhurried lion. The sun was almost down and with the clouds there would be no light to shoot in another five minutes.

  “Now things aren’t so complicated,” Mary said very happily.

  “Go to camp for the motor car,” I told Ngui. “We’ll go back to wait with Charo with the meat.”

  That night when we had gone to our own beds but were not yet asleep we heard the lion roar. He was north of the camp and the roar came low and mounting in heaviness and then ended in a sigh.

  “I’m coming in with you,” Mary said.

  We lay close together in the dark under the mosquito bar, my arm around her, and listened to him roar again.

  “There’s no mistaking when it’s him,” Mary said. “I’m glad we’re in bed together when we hear him.”

  He was moving to the north and west, grunting deeply and then roaring.

  “Is he calling up the lionesses or is he angry? What is he really doing?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I think he’s angry because it’s wet.”

  “But he roared too when it was dry and we tracked him in the bush.”

  “I was just joking, honey. I only hear him roar. I can see him when he sets himself and tomorrow you’ll see where he tears the ground up.”

  “He’s too great to joke about.”

  “I have to joke about him if I’m going to back you up. You wouldn’t want me to start worrying about him would you?”

  “Listen to him,” Mary said.

  We lay together and listened to him. You cannot describe a wild lion’s roar. You can only say that you listened and the lion roared. It is not at all like the noise the lion makes at the start of Metro Goldwyn Mayer pictures. When you hear it you first feel it in your scrotum and it runs all the way up through your body.

  “He makes me feel hollow inside,” Mary said. “He really is the king of the night.”

  We listened and he roared again still moving to the northwest. This time the roar ended with a cough.

  “Just hope he kills,” I said to her. “Don’t think about him too much and sleep well.”

  “I have to think about him and I want to think about him. He’s my lion and I love him and respect him and I have to kill him. He means more to me than anything except you and our people. You know what he means.”

  “Too bloody well,” I said. “But you ought to sleep, honey. Maybe he is roaring to keep you awake.”

  “Well then let him keep me awake,” Mary said. “If I’m going to kill him he has a right to keep me awake. I love everything he does and everything about him.”

  “But you ought to sleep a little bit, honey. He wouldn’t like you not to sleep.”

  “He doesn’t care about me at all. I care about him and that’s why I kill him. You ought to understand.”

  “I understand. But you ought to sleep good now, my kitten. Because tomorrow in the morning it starts.”

  “I’ll sleep. But I want to hear him speak once more.”

  She was very sleepy and I thought that this girl who had lived all her life never wishing to kill anything until she had fallen in with bad characters in the war had been hunting lions too long on a perfectly straight basis, which, without a professional to back her up, was not a sound trade or occupation and could be very bad for one and obviously was being that at this moment. Then the lion roared again and coughed three times. The coughs came from the earth where he was direct into the tent.

  “I’ll go to sleep now,” Miss Mary said. “I hope he didn’t cough because he had to. Can he catch cold?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Will you sleep well and good now?”

  “I’m asleep already. But you must wake me long before first light no matter how asleep I am. Do you promise?”

  “I promise.” Then she was asleep and I lay far against the wall of the tent and felt her sleeping softly and when my left arm began to ache I took it from under her head and felt her to be comfortable and then I occupied a small part of the big cot and then listened to the lion. He was silent until about three o’clock when he killed. After that the hyenas all started to speak and the lion fed and from time to time spoke gruffly. There was no talk from the lionesses. One I knew was about to have cubs and would have nothing to do with him and the other was her girlfriend. I thought it was still too wet to find him when it was light. But there was always a chance.

  6

  LONG BEFORE IT was light in the morning Mwindi woke us with the tea. He said “Hodi” and left the tea outside the door of the tent on the table. I took a cup in to Mary and dressed outside. It was overcast and you could not see the stars.

  Charo and Ngui came in the dark to get the guns and the cartridges and I took my tea out to the table where one of the boys who served the mess tent was building up the fire. Mary was washing and getting dressed, still between sleeping and waking. I walked out on the open ground beyond the elephant skull and the three big bushes and found the ground was still quite damp underfoot. It had dried during the night and it would be much drier than the day before. But I still doubted if we could take the car much past where I figured the lion had killed and I was sure it would be too wet beyond there and between there and the swamp.

  The swamp was really misnamed. There was an actual papyrus swamp with much flowing water in it that was a mile and a half across and perhaps four miles long. But the locality that we referred to as the swamp also consisted of the area of big trees that surrounded it. Many of these were on comparatively high ground and some were very beautiful. They made a band of forest around the true swamp but there were parts of this timber that had been so pulled down by feeding elephants that it was almost impassable. There were several rhino that lived in this forest; there were nearly always some elephant now and sometimes there was a great herd of elephant. Two herds of buffalo used it. Leopards lived in the deep part of this forest and hunted out of it and it was the refuge of the particular lion when he came down to feed on the game of the plains.

  This forest of great, tall and fallen trees was the western boundary of the open and wooded plain and the beautiful glades that were bounded on the north by the flat salt flats and the broken lava rock country that led to the other great marsh that lay between our country and the Chulu hills. On the east was the miniature desert that was the gerenuk country and further to the east was a country of bushy broken hills that later rose in height toward the flanks of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was not as simple as that but that was how it seemed from a map or from the center of the plain and the glades country.

  The lion’s habit was to kill on the plain or in the broken glades during the night and then, having eaten, retire to the belt of forest. Our plan was to locate him on his kill and stalk him there, or to have the luck to intercept him on his way to the forest. If he got enough confidence so that he would not go all the way to the forest we could track him up from the kill to wherever he m
ight lie up after he had gone for water.

  While Mary was dressing and then making her way on the track across the meadow to the belt of trees where the green canvas latrine tent was hidden, I was thinking about the lion. We must take him on if there was any chance of success. Mary had shot well and was confident. But if there was only a chance of frightening him or of spooking him into high grass or difficult country where she could not see him because of her height, we should leave him alone to become confident. I hoped we would find that he had gone off after he had fed, drunk at some of the surface water that still lay in the mud holes of the plain, and then gone to sleep in one of the brush islands of the plain or the patches of trees in the glades.

  The car was ready with Mthuka at the wheel and I had checked all the guns when Mary came back. It was light now but not light enough to shoot. The clouds were still well down the slopes of the Mountain and there was no sign of the sun except that the light was strengthening. I looked through the sights of my rifle at the elephant skull but it was still too dark to shoot. Charo and Ngui were both very serious and formal.

  “How do you feel, kitten?” I said to Mary.

  “Wonderful. How did you think I’d feel?”

  “Did you use the Eygene?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Did you?”

  “Yes. We’re just waiting for it to get a little lighter.”

  “It’s light enough for me.”

  “It isn’t for me.”

  “You ought to do something about your eyes.”

  “I told them we’d be back for breakfast.”

  “That will give me a headache.”

  “We brought some stuff. It’s in a box back there.”

  “Does Charo have plenty of ammo for me?”

  “Ask him.”

  Mary spoke to Charo, who said he had “Mingi risasi.”

  “Want to roll your right sleeve up?” I asked. “You asked me to remind you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to remind me in an evil bad temper.”

  “Why don’t you get angry at the lion instead of me?”

  “I’m not angry at the lion in any way. Do you think there is enough light for you to see now?”

  “Kwenda na Simba,” I said to Mthuka. Then to Ngui, “Stand up in back to watch.”

  We started off; the tires taking hold very well on the drying track; me leaning out with both boots outside the cutout door; the morning air cold off the Mountain; the rifle feeling good. I put it to my shoulder and aimed a few times. Even with the big yellow light concentrating glasses I saw that there was not enough light yet to shoot safely. But it was twenty minutes to where we were going and the light was strengthening every minute.

  “Light’s going to be fine,” I said.

  “I thought it would,” Mary said. I looked around. She was sitting with great dignity and she was chewing gum.

  We went up the track past the improvised airstrip. There was game everywhere and the new grass seemed to have grown an inch since the morning of the day before. There were white flowers coming up too, solid in the spread of the grass and making the whole field white. There was still some water in the low parts of the tracks and I motioned to Mthuka to turn off the track to the left to avoid some standing water. The flowered grass was slippery. The light was getting better all the time.

  Mthuka saw the birds perched heavily in the two trees off the right beyond the next two glades and pointed. If they were still up it should mean the lion was on the kill. Ngui slapped on the top of the car with the palm of his hand and we stopped. I remember thinking that it was strange that Mthuka should have seen the birds before Ngui when Ngui was much higher. Ngui dropped to the ground and came alongside of the car crouching so his body would not break its outline. He grabbed my foot and pointed to the left toward the belt of forest.

  The great black-maned lion, his body looking almost black and his large head and shoulders swinging, was trotting into the tall grass.

  “You see him?” I asked Mary softly.

  “I see him.”

  He was into the grass now and only his head and shoulders showed; then only his head; the grass swaying and closing behind him. He had evidently heard the car or else he had started for the forest early and seen us coming up the road.

  “There’s no sense you going in here,” I said to Mary.

  “I know all that,” she said. “If we’d have been out earlier we would have found him.”

  “It wasn’t light enough to shoot. If you had wounded him I’d have had to follow him in there.”

  “We’d have had to follow him.”

  “The hell with the we stuff.”

  “How do you propose to get him then?” She was angry but only angry with the prospect of action and a termination gone and not stupid in her anger so that she could expect to demand to be allowed to go into grass taller than her head after a wounded lion.

  “I expect him to get confident when he sees us drive on now without even going over to his kill.” Then I interrupted to say, “Get in, Ngui. Go ahead poli poli Mthuka.” Then feeling Ngui beside me and the car proceeding slowly along the track with my two friends and brothers watching the vultures perched in the trees, I said to Mary, “What do you think Pop would have done? Chased him into the grass and the down timber and taken you in where you’re not tall enough to see? What are we supposed to do? Get you killed or kill the lion?”

  “Don’t embarrass Charo with your shouting.”

  “I wasn’t shouting.”

  “You ought to hear yourself sometime.”

  “Listen,” I whispered.

  “Don’t say listen and don’t whisper. And don’t say on your own two feet and when the chips are down.”

  “You certainly make lion hunting lovely sometimes. How many people have betrayed you in it so far?”

  “Pop and you and I don’t remember who else. G.C. probably will too. If you know so much you lion-hunting general who knows everything why haven’t the birds come down if the lion’s left the kill?”

  “Because either one or both of the lionesses are still on it or laying up close to it?”

  “Aren’t we going to see?”

  “From further up the road and so as not to spook anything. I want them all to be confident.”

  “Now I’m getting a little tired of the phrase, ‘I want them to be confident.’ If you can’t vary your thinking you could try to vary your language.”

  “How long have you been hunting this lion, honey?”

  “It seems like forever and I could have killed him three months ago if you and G.C. would have let me. I had an easy chance and you wouldn’t let me take him.”

  “Because we didn’t know he was this lion. He might have been a lion that had come from Amboseli with the drought. G.C. has a conscience.”

  “Both of you have the consciences of bush-wacky delinquents,” Miss Mary said. “When will we see the lionesses?”

  “To your right bearing forty-five degrees about three hundred more yards up this track.”

  “And what Force is the wind?”

  “About Force Two,” I said. “Honey, you are a little lion-wacky.”

  “Who has more right to be? Of course I am. But I take lions seriously.”

  “I do too, really. And I think I care as much about them as you do even if I don’t talk about it.”

  “You talk about it plenty. Don’t worry. But you and G.C. are just a pair of conscience-ridden murderers. Condemning things to death and carrying out the sentence. And G.C. has a much better conscience than you too and his people are properly disciplined.”

  I touched Mthuka on the thigh so that he would stop the car. “Look, honey. There is what’s left of the zebra kill and there are the two lionesses. Can we be friends?”

  “I’ve always been friends,” she said. “You just misinterpret things. May I have the bini please?”

  I handed her the good binoculars and she watched the two lionesses. The one was so big with cubs that she l
ooked to be a maneless lion. The other was possibly her grown daughter; perhaps only a devoted friend. They each lay under the shelter of an island of brush; the one calm, dignified and pre-matronly, her tawny jaws dark with blood; the other young and lithe and equally dark about the jowls. There was not much of the zebra left but they were protecting their property. I could not have told from the sounds I had heard in the night whether they had killed for the lion or whether he had killed and they had joined him.

  The birds perched heavily in both of the small trees and in the biggest tree in one of the green islands of bush there must have been a hundred more. The vultures were heavy, hump shouldered and ready to drop but the lionesses were too close to the striped quarter and neck of the zebra that lay on the ground. I saw a jackal, looking neat and handsome as a fox, at the edge of one of the patches of bush and then another one. There were no hyenas in sight.

  “We shouldn’t spook them,” I said. “I favor not going near it at all.”

  Mary was friends now. Seeing any lions always excited and pleased her and she said, “Do you think they killed or he killed?”

  “I think he killed and ate what he wanted and they came much later.”

  “Would the birds come in the night?”

  “No.”

  “There are an awful lot of them. Look at the ones stretching their wings to dry like the buzzards do at home.”

  “They’re awfully ugly to be Royal Game and when they have rinderpest or other cattle diseases they must spread it terribly with their droppings. There are certainly too many of them for this area. The insects and the hyenas and the jackals could clean up after any kills made here and the hyenas can kill what is sick or too old and eat on the spot and not spread it all over the countryside.”

  Seeing the lionesses in their shelter and the truly horrible vultures clumped in such numbers in the trees had made me talk too much; that and that we were friends again and that I would not have to pit my truly loved Miss Mary with the lion until another day. Then too I hated vultures and I believed their true utility as scavengers was greatly overrated. Someone had decided that they were the great garbage disposers of Africa and they had been made Royal Game and could not be held down in numbers and their role as spreaders of disease was heresy against that magic word Royal Game. The Wakamba thought it was very funny and we always called them King’s birds.