Part 22 (1/2)
Upon a later occasion--Christmas night, it was--I watched from a boma near an elephant we had killed, but except for the distant grunting of lions, there was nothing important to chronicle.
Lion hunting goes by luck. One man may sit in a boma night after night without getting a shot, while another may go out once and bring back a black-mane. I spent two nights in a boma without seeing a lion; Stephenson spent seven nights and saw only a lioness. He held his fire in the expectation that the male was with her and would soon appear.
Presently a huge beast appeared, vague in the dark shadows; he thought it was the male lion, shot, and the next morning found a large dead hyena.
Mrs. Akeley went out only once, had a night of thrilling experiences, and killed a large male lion. The lion appeared early in the evening and her first shot just grazed the backbone. An inch higher and it would have missed, but as it was, the mere grazing of the backbone paralyzed the animal, preventing its escape. All night long it crouched helplessly before them, twelve yards away, insane with rage and fury. Its roars were terrifying. A number of times she shot, but in the darkness none of the many hits reached a vital spot. Once in the night two other lions came, but escaped after being fired at.
As soon as daylight appeared and she could see the sights of her rifle she easily killed the lion. It was the largest one of the eleven killed in our hunting trip, and was killed with a little .256 Mannlicher, the same weapon with which she shot her record elephant on Mount Kenia.
In the tall-gra.s.s method, native beaters are sent in long skirmish line through swamps and such places as lions like to lay up in during the hours of daylight. The beaters chant a weird and rather musical refrain as they advance and thrash the high reeds with their sticks. Reedbuck, sometimes a bushbuck, frequently hyenas, and many large owls are driven out of nearly every good-sized swamp. The hunters divide, one or more on each side of the swamp and slightly ahead of the line of beaters. As the lion springs out it is up to the hunter nearest to it to meet it with the traditional unerring shot.
[Photograph: The Tree Method of Lion Shooting]
[Photograph: Dragged a Zebra to the Boma]
[Photograph: By courtesy of W.D. Boyce. The Rifle Was Sighted on the Bait]
In our experience we beat dozens of swamps and reed beds. Stephenson would take one side of the swamp, I the other, while Akeley with his moving-picture machine, would take the side best suited to photographic purposes. He got some wonderful results, two of which were records of the death of two lionesses.
Upon the first of these occasions the beaters had worked down a long stretch of swamp and had almost reached the end. Suddenly they showed an agitated interest in something in front of them. They thought it was a lion until an innocent by-stander made an unauthorized guess that it was a hyena. This rea.s.sured the beaters and they advanced boldly in the belief that it was a harmless hyena. My valor rose in proportion and for the same reason, and I strolled bravely over to the edge of the reeds where a little opening appeared. It was something of a shock to see two lions stroll suddenly into view. I fired, hitting the last one. Then they both disappeared in the reeds ahead.
It was amazing to note the sudden epidemic of caution upon the part of all concerned. The beaters refused to advance until Stephenson joined them with his big rifle. I moved forward on the side lines and the moving-picture machine reeled off yards of film.
A man has to appear brave when a camera is turned on him, but with two lions a few feet away there was not a tendency to advance with that impetuous dash that one would like to see in a moving picture of oneself. Anyway, I tried to keep up an appearance of advancing without actually covering much territory.
One of my gunbearers suddenly clutched my arm and pointed into the reeds. There, only a few feet away, was the tawny figure of a lion, either lying down or crouching. I fired and nearly blew its head off. It was the one I had wounded a few minutes before.
[Drawing: _Photographed in Times of Danger_]
There was still the other lion in the reeds. So I joined the beaters while Stephenson came out and took a commanding position at the side of the reeds. In a moment or two there was a tawny flash and the lion was seen as it broke from the reeds and sprang away up the hill. It was on the opposite side of the reeds from Stephenson, but his first shot hit it and it stopped and turned angrily. In another instant it would have charged, but a second shot from his rifle killed it instantly. Both of the animals were young lionesses of the same age and nearly full grown.
Sometimes, when a lion is driven to bay in the tall gra.s.s at the end of a swamp, the beaters refuse to advance, and it then becomes necessary for the hunter to go in and take the lead. An occasion of this sort was among the most thrilling of my African experiences.
An immense swamp had been beaten out and nothing had developed until the beaters were almost at the end of the swamp. Extending from the end and joining it was a patch of wire-like reeds, eight or ten feet high and covering two or three acres. This high gra.s.s was almost impenetrable by a man, and it was only possible to go through it by throwing one's weight forward and crus.h.i.+ng down the dense growth. The gra.s.s grew from hummocks, between which were deep water channels. An animal could glide through these channels, but a man must batter his way through the stockade of dense gra.s.s that spread out above.
It was in this place that the lion was first heard and the beaters refused to follow it in. Guttural grunts and snarls came from that uninviting jungle, and we knew that the only way to force the lion out was to go in and drive it out.
At about this time another lion came out of the swamp behind and loped up the hill. The saises were sent galloping after it to round it up, but they reappeared after a few moments and reported that it had got away in the direction of a huge swamp a mile or so beyond. We began to think we had struck a nest of lions.
Then we went in to drive out that lion in the deep gra.s.s. The native beaters, encouraged by seeing armed white men leading the way, came along with renewed enthusiasm. That gra.s.s was something terrible. One would hardly care to go through it if he knew that a bag of gold or a fairy princess awaited him beyond; with a lion there, the delight of the job became immeasurably less. We could not see three feet ahead. From time to time we were floundering down into channels of water hidden by the density of the gra.s.s. Some of these channels were two feet deep. And with each yard of advance came the realization that we were coming to an inevitable show-down with that lion. Akeley and I were in with the beaters, Stephenson was beyond the patch of gra.s.s to intercept the lion should it break forth, from cover.
It was not until we had nearly traversed the entire patch of reeds that the lion was found. It evidently lay silently ahead of us until we were almost upon it. Then, almost beneath my feet, came the angry and ominous growl, and my Somali gunbearer leaped in terror, falling as he did so. I expected to see a long, lean flash of yellow body and to experience the sensation of being mauled by a lion. All was breathlessly silent for a moment. Then a shot from Stephenson's rifle said that the lion had burst from the reeds and into view.
We pushed our way out to see what had happened.
The lion had come out, then turned suddenly back into the cover of reeds, working its way along the front of the beaters. For an instant Stephenson saw it and fired into the gra.s.s ahead of it without result.
The track of the lion was followed, but the animal had succeeded in getting around the beaters and back into the swamp. Fires were lighted, but the reeds were too green to burn except in occasional spots.