Part 12 (2/2)
[Photograph: By courtesy of W.D. Boyce. The Bull Elephant]
[Photograph: Cooking Elephant Meat]
Fortunately the elephants continued in their course and we followed them with my big rifle again reloaded and ready. Once more they turned in toward the river and were completely swallowed up in the tall reeds. We again waded in after them and had gone only a few yards when we once more saw the angry head of the big one looming up as it came toward us.
I fired point-blank at the base of the trunk and the beast stopped suddenly. Then it slowly turned and as it was about to disappear in the tall elephant gra.s.s again I fired at its backbone. The huge bulk collapsed and disappeared, buried in the reeds. Ha.s.san yelled that it was dead, but we couldn't see for the gra.s.s. The situation now was perilous in the extreme. The river made a sharp bend at this point like an incomplete letter O, with a narrow neck of land through which the elephants had pa.s.sed when I had shot. At the narrow neck it was about a hundred feet across while the depth of the ”O” was about three hundred feet and the width about two hundred and fifty feet. This small peninsula was matted with a jungle growth of high gra.s.s and reeds six or eight feet tall, while the edges of the river were thickly wooded with small trees tangled together and interlacing their branches over the narrow but deep waters of the Nzoia.
[Drawing: _Awaiting the Charge_]
Down in the jungle depths of this peninsula there was a violent commotion among the low branches of these trees, an indication that the animal was not dead, but was thras.h.i.+ng madly about as if desperately wounded. Ha.s.san said it was the young elephant and that the older one was dead, but this could not be determined without pus.h.i.+ng on through the reeds until we would be almost upon them. This course seemed too dangerous to try.
The river at this point was absolutely impa.s.sable for animals. The banks were ten feet high and perpendicular. The water was perhaps five or six feet deep and the width of the swift stream not over twenty or thirty feet. The trees had interlaced their roots and branches across the river and in the water. No animal, not a tree climber, could possibly cross the stream on account of the straight up and down banks.
So after a time we crept along through the gra.s.s at the edge of the stream until we reached a point probably forty yards from where the elephants doubtless were, although quite hidden from our view. There was still a tremendous thres.h.i.+ng in the low branches of the trees and in order to see the animals we had to creep cautiously across the peninsula to a point about half-way, where a large, rotten, dead tree stood. This gave us cover and from its screen we could see the three elephants, only fifteen yards away. The head of the big one was still up and it was turned directly at us. It was so close and so big that the effect was terrifying.
”_Mkubwa_,” whispered Sulimani, and that means ”big.” So the big elephant, instead of being dead, was still alive, with an impa.s.sable river at its feet on one side, a dense tangle of trees on two other sides, and with a narrow open aisle between it and ourselves. The two smaller elephants were at its side. To see to fire I had to step out from the tree and expose myself, and as I stepped out the wounded beast saw me and reared its head as if to make a final rush. I fired point-blank; it swung around and a second shot sent it down. Ha.s.san grabbed my arm and told me to hurry back before the two smaller elephants charged. If they did so it might be necessary to shoot them, which we didn't want to do. So we ran swiftly back to the edge of the river and waited. But all was quiet, and after a time we climbed across the river on the interlacing branches, circled around to where the elephants were visible just across the stream and scared the two smaller ones away. Once more we swung across from branch to branch over the swift waters of the river and reached the other bank where lay the mountainous bulk of the dead elephant. It was a young bull about eight feet high and with two well-shaped tusks twenty-two inches long in the open, or approximately thirty-eight inches in all.
Sulimani was sent to notify Mr. Akeley and Mr. Clark, and after a long search found them, and together they arrived a couple of hours later, followed by gunbearers and saises. Mr. Stephenson had gone back to camp to see that salt and supplies, with one tent, were sent out.
Then began the work of measuring the elephant, a work that must be done most thoroughly when the trophy is to be mounted entire. There were dozens of measurements of every part of the body, enough to make a dress for a woman, and then came the skinning, a prodigious task that took all of the late afternoon and evening. We investigated the position of an elephant's heart which Kermit Roosevelt had said was up in the upper third or at the top of the second third of the body, a spot which must be reached by a shot directed through the point of the ear as it lay back. As a matter of fact, an elephant's heart lies against the brisket, about ten or eleven inches from the bottom of the breast. A broadside shot through the front leg at the elbow would penetrate the heart.
At nine o'clock, Christmas Eve, the tent arrived and was soon put up in the jungle of high gra.s.s at the middle of the little peninsula. A more African scene can not be imagined. The porter's fires, over each of which sticks spitted with elephant meat _en brochette_ were cooking, imparted a weird look to the river jungle gra.s.s and spectral trees.
At ten o'clock we had our dinner and at eleven we put on our pajamas and with the camp-fire burning before the tent and the armed askaris pacing back and forth, gave ourselves up to lazy talk, then meditation and then sound sleep.
It was a wonderful day--one always to be remembered.
The next day, Christmas, came without the usual customs of Christmas morn. In the forenoon we stuck with the bull elephant, getting its skin and bones ready for transportation back to camp; and in the afternoon came the work of saving the skull and part of the skin of the cow elephant. The porters must have thought the day a wonderful one, for they ate and gorged on elephant meat until they could hardly move.
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE SWAMPS ON THE GUAS NGISHU. BEATING FOR LIONS WE CAME UPON A STRANGE AND FASCINATING WILD BEAST, WHICH BECAME ATTACHED TO OUR PARTY.
THE LITTLE WANDEROBO DOG
One of the most exciting phases of African hunting is the beating of swamps for lion. A long skirmish line of native porters is sent in at one end of the swamp and, like a gigantic comb, sweeps every live thing ahead of it as it advances through the reeds. All kinds of swamp life are stirred into action, and a fairly large swamp will yield forth the contents of a pretty respectable menagerie. Sometimes a hyena or two will be flushed and once in a while a lion will be driven out.
It is the constant expectation of the last-named animal that gives such keen and long sustained interest to the work of beating a swamp. One never knows what to expect. A suspicious stir in the reeds may mean a lion or only a hyena; an enormous cras.h.i.+ng may sound like a herd of elephants, but finally resolve itself into a badly frightened reedbuck.
Most of the time you expect reedbuck, but all the time you have to be ready for lion. As a general thing a lion will slink along in the reeds ahead of the beaters and not reveal himself until he is driven to the end of the cover. Then he will grunt warningly or show an ear or a las.h.i.+ng tail above the reeds, and instantly every one is in a state of intense expectancy. What the next move will be no one knows, but it is more than likely to be something of a supremely dramatic sort.
One day we were beating swamps on the Guas Ngishu Plateau. Lions seemed to be numerous in that district. Two days before I had killed two lions near by, and during the morning Stephenson and I had each killed a lioness in the same line of marshy reed beds. We now intended advancing to the next large swamp of the chain and see whether a large, black-maned lion might not be routed out.
Conditions seemed propitious, for in this selfsame swamp Colonel Roosevelt had seen the best lion of his trip some weeks before. Perhaps the lion might still be there.
The campaign was planned with great thoroughness. Forty or fifty porters were formed into the customary skirmish line and on each side we paralleled the beaters with our rifles. At the word of command the column began to advance and the interest reached a fever heat. The swamp was five or six hundred yards long, and for the first three hundred yards nothing of a thrilling sort occurred. The shouts of the beaters blended into a rhythmic, melodious chant and the swish of their sticks as they thrashed the reeds was enough to make even the king of beasts apprehensive.
[Photograph: Abdi, the Somali Head-man]
[Photograph: Along the Nzoia River]
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