The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier Part 25

"It was only a few hours until, working with knife and tweezers, the _Sahib_ had all the mimosa thorns dug out of my back and legs, but it was many months before Djama Aout recovered partial use of his good right arm, and it may very well be generations before the story of his heroic deed ceases to be sung in Somali villages."

CHAPTER XVI

A MODERN COEUR-DE-LION

To seek to come to death grips with the King of Beasts, a man must himself be nothing short of lion-hearted. Such men there are, a few, men with an inborn l.u.s.t of battle, a love of staking their own lives against the heaviest odds; men who, lacking a Crusader's cult or a country's need to cut and thrust for, go out among the savage denizens of the desert seeking opportunity to fight for their faith in their own strong arms and steady nerves; men who shrink from a laurel but treasure a trophy. William Northrup McMillan, a native of St. Louis, who has spent the last eight years in exploration of the Blue Nile and in travel through Abyssinia and British East Africa, is such a man.

A friend of Mr. McMillan has told me the following story of one of his hunting experiences. While I can only tell it in simple prose, the deed described deserves perpetuity in the stately metre of a saga.

The Jig-Jigga country, a province of Abyssinia lying near the border of British Somaliland and governed by Abdullah Dowa, an Arab sheik owing allegiance to King Menelek, is the best lion country in all Africa.

Jig-Jigga is an arid plateau averaging 5,000 feet above sea level, poorly watered but generously gra.s.sed, spa.r.s.ely timbered with the th.o.r.n.y mimosa (full brother to the Texas _mesquite_), and swarming everywhere with innumerable varieties of the wild game on which the lion preys and fattens--eland, oryx, hartebeest, gazelle, and zebra.

There are two ways of hunting lion. First, from the perfectly safe shelter of a zareba, a tightly enclosed hut built of th.o.r.n.y mimosa bows, with no opening but a narrow porthole for rifle fire. Within the _zareba_ the hunter is shut in at nightfall by his _shikaris_, usually having one _shikari_ with him, sometimes with a goat as a third companion and a lure for lion. An occasional bite of the goat's ear by sharp _shikari_ teeth inspires shrill bleats sure to bring any lion lurking near in range of the hunter's rifle. At other times goat ears are spared, and the loudest-braying donkey of the caravan is picketed immediately in front of the _zareba's_ porthole, his normal vocal activities stimulated by the occasional prod of a stick. Sometimes several weary sleepless nights are spent without result, but sooner or later, without the slightest sound hinting his approach, suddenly a great yellow body flashes out of the darkness and upon the cringing lure. For an instant there are the sinister sounds of savage snarls, rending flesh, cracking bones and screams of pain and fear, and then a dull red flash heralds the rifle's roar, and the tawny terror falls gasping his life out across his prey.

The second, and the only sportsmanlike way of lion-hunting, is by tracking him in the open. The pony men circle till they find a trail, follow it till close enough to the game to race ahead and bring it to bay, circle about it while a messenger brings up the _Sahib_, who dismounts and advances afoot to a combat wherein the echo of a misplaced shot may sound his own death-knell.

One morning while camped in the Jig-Jigga country, William Marlow, our _Sahib's_ valet, was out with the pony men trailing a wounded oryx, while the _Sahib_ himself was three miles away shooting eland. In mid forenoon Marlow's men struck the fresh track of two great male lions, plainly out on a hunting party of their own.

Instantly Marlow rushed a messenger away to fetch the _Sahib_, and he and the pony men then took the trail at a run. Within two hours the pony men succeeded in circling the quarry and stopping it in a mimosa thicket. Shortly thereafter, while they were circling and shouting about the thicket to prevent a charge before the _Sahib's_ arrival, an incident occurred which proves alike the utter fearlessness and the marvellous knowledge of the game of the Somali. Suddenly out of the shadows of the thicket sprang one of the lions and launched himself like a thunderbolt upon one of the pony men, bearing horse and rider to the ground. Losing his spear in the fall and held fast by one leg beneath his horse, the rider was defenceless. However, he seized a th.o.r.n.y stick and began beating the lion across the face, while the lion tore at the pony's flank and quarters. Then down from his horse sprang another pony man, and knowing he could not kill the lion with his spear quickly enough to save his companion, approached and crouched directly in front of the lion till his own face was scarcely two feet from the lion's, and there made such frightful grimaces and let off such shrill shrieks, that, frightened from his prey, the lion slunk snarling to the edge of the thicket.

Just at this moment the _Sahib_ raced upon the scene, accompanied by his Secretary, H. Morgan Brown. In the run he had far outdistanced his gun-bearers. Marlow was unarmed and Brown carried nothing but a camera. Thus the _Sahib's_ single-shot .577 rifle was the only effective weapon in the party, and for it he did not even have a single spare cartridge. The one little cylinder of bra.s.s within the chamber of his rifle, with the few grains of powder and nickeled lead it held, was the only certain safeguard of the group against death or mangling.

All this must have flashed across the _Sahib's_ mind as he leaped from his pony and took stand in the open, sixty steps from where the lion stood roaring and savagely lashing his tail. A little back of the _Sahib_ and to his left stood Brown with his camera, beside him Marlow.

Instantly, firm planted on his feet, the _Sahib_ threw the rifle to his face for a steady standing shot. But quicker even than this act, instinctively, the furious King of Beasts had marked the giant bulk of the _Sahib_ as the one foeman of the half-score round him worthy of his gleaming ivory weapons, and at him straight he charged the very instant the gun was levelled, coming in great bounds that tossed clouds of dust behind him, coming with hoa.r.s.e roars at every bound, roars to shake nerves not made of steel and still the beating of the stoutest heart.

On came the lion, and there stood the _Sahib_--on and yet on--till it must have seemed to his companions that the _Sahib_ was frozen in his tracks.

But all the time a firm hand and a true eye held the bead of the rifle sight to close pursuit of the lion's every move, so held it till only a narrow sixteen yards separated man and beast. Then the _Sahib's_ rifle cracked; and, with marvellous nerve, Brown snapped his camera a second later and caught the picture of the kill. Hitting the beast squarely in the forehead just at the take-on of a bound, the heavy .577 bullet cleaned out the lion's brain pan and killed him instantly, his body turning in mid-air and hitting the ground inert. A better rifle-shot would be impossible, and as good a camera snapshot has certainly never been made in the very face of instant, impending, deadly peril.

A half-hour later Lion Number Two, slower of resolution than his mate, fell to the _Sahib's_ first shot, with a broken neck, while lashing himself into fit fury for a charge. This was more even than a royal kill; each of the lions was, in size, a record among Jig-Jigga hunters, the first measuring eleven feet one inch from tip of nose to tip of tail, the second eleven feet.

And then the party marched back to camp with the trophies, Djama Aout, the head _shikari_, chanting paeans to his Sahib's prowess, while his mates roared a hoa.r.s.e Somali chorus, and all night long, by ancient law of _shikari_, the camp feasted, chanted, and danced, one sable saga-maker after another chanting his pride to serve so valiant a _Sahib_.

THE END