09 Lion Adventure (3 page)

The lion mauled them.’

King Ku’s eyes brightened. ‘Ah, that is too bad. Are they in the hospital? Will they live?’

They will live - they did not need to go to the hospital.’

‘But you say they were hurt. Soon they will find-poison in their blood and they will die. It is very sad.’

They treated the wounds with the white man’s strong stuff. They will not die.’

King Ku’s dark face seemed to become darker. ‘We’ll see about that.’ Then, noticing the puzzled look on Tanga’s face, he added, ‘I mean, we’ll see that they are protected. 111 order my medicine man to cast a spell over them. Tell them to have no fear of claws or teeth. No harm can come to them. You will tell them?’

‘I will tell them.’

He did. In the dingy little railway station the boys listened to Tanga’s assurance that King Ku would take care of them.

Then, leaving Tanga at his desk, they went out to walk up and down the railway platform and wonder what it all meant.

‘Why is Ku so anxious to have us think we can’t be hurt?’ puzzled Hal. ‘Is he trying to throw us off guard? Does he want us to take chances so we will be hurt? What can that old geezer have against us?’

‘He looks savage enough to be capable of most anything,’ Roger said. ‘And Tanga - you know he was the one who got us into this. Do you suppose the two of them are trying to do us in?’

‘Tanga seems such a good guy.’ Hal said. ‘Always smiling.’

‘I know. But smiles don’t mean much. You know what Hamlet said - about how a fellow can “smile, and smile, and be a villain”.’

‘Well,’ Hal said, ‘I’m not going to worry myself sick about it. Let’s go get a little shut-eye to make up for last flight.’

In their tent which had been pitched close to the railway track they tossed restlessly on their cots.

‘What I can’t understand,’ Roger said, ‘is how all this man-eating got started. Why is it so bad here?’

‘You’ve heard of “the man-eaters of Tsavo”?’

‘It sort of rings a bell. What’s the story?’

‘It happened right here. A couple of thousand men were building this stretch of railway. Their boss was a construction engineer named Colonel Patterson.

‘Some of the men got sick and died. Colonel Patterson ordered several men to bury the dead, and paid them extra for digging the graves. The men took the money, but they were too lazy to dig graves. They just hid the corpses in the bushes.

‘Game was scarce that year and the lions were hungry. Two of them found the bodies and ate them. That gave them a taste for human flesh. More men died and were eaten. The lions came every night. One night they found no corpses - so they broke into a tent, dragged out two men, killed them, and ate them.’

Roger sat bolt upright. ‘You mean they came straight into a tent - a tent like this?’ ‘Exactly like this. And they kept coming every night.’ ‘But didn’t this Colonel Patterson do anything about it?’

‘He tried. But remember, he was an engineer, not a hunter. He had plenty of courage, but he didn’t quite know how to go about it. He would sit up in a tree with a gun near the spot where a man had been killed the night before. The lions had too much sense to go there again. They would attack somewhere else.’

‘One night he sat up on a branch above the body of a man who had just died. Having been up every night, the colonel was very tired. He went to sleep. A growl below disturbed him. he moved a little, and fell plop on to a lion. Luckily the lion was so startled that it ran off into the bush.’

‘The colonel built a lion trap. It was a big box made out of wood and iron and the door was fixed so it would close and lock if a spring in the floor was stepped on. At the back of the box he fenced off a small room and put a couple of men in it. They were safe behind bars. The idea was that the lion would come into the cage after the men and would step on the spring and lock himself in.’

‘One of the man-eaters did walk into the trap, stepped on the spring, and the door snapped shut. The lion roared and woke the camp. The colonel and four of his men with rifles came running and fired twenty bullets into the cage. They couldn’t see very well - they missed the lion but one of their bullets broke the latch, the door swung open, and the lion escaped.’

‘The colonel tried tin pans. He had his men surround a man-eater where it lay in the brush. Each man was armed with several tin pans. A passage was left open for the lion to escape. There the colonel posted himself so that he could pot the lion when it came out of the brush.

‘When he was all ready the men beat their tin pans together and the frightened lion came running through the brush. The colonel pulled the trigger but the gun only clicked. A misfire. Before he could use the other barrel the lion got away.’

‘The colonel didn’t get much help from his men because they believed the lions were really devils and could not be killed.’

The lions did show devilish intelligence. The colonel had strychnine put in the corpses of two men and laid them out in the bush. The lions were heard prowling about during the night but in the morning the bodies were still there, untouched. But two more men were missing from the camp.’

‘More than a thousand of the men went on strike. They leaped on a train bound for Mombasa.

The men who were left built shelters for themselves up on tanks or roofs or in trees. Some dug pits under their tents, covered the pits with logs, and slept down in the hole. Surely there they would be safe. But the lions pulled aside the logs, leaped down into the pits, and dragged out the men.’

‘They didn’t take the trouble to pull them off into the brush but ate them just outside the tents in spite of a hail of bullets.’

‘So many men climbed one tree that it fell on a man-eater, pinning him to the ground, but before they could call the colonel with his gun the lion wriggled loose and disappeared.’

‘Two experienced hunters came down from Nairobi. They had shot plenty of lions and were sure they could get these two devils. As soon as they stepped from the train a lion leaped upon one of them, knocked him down, and proceeded to eat him. When the other hunter attempted to interfere the lion jumped on his back and ripped it to shreds. The hunter was taken to the hospital. He never did shoot that lion.’

‘One night a dead donkey was put out where the lions could easily get at it. The colonel had a hunting platform —they call it a machan - put up about ten feet from the body. The machan was twelve feet high and consisted of four poles stuck into the ground and supporting a plank that served as a seat.’

‘The colonel perched up on this seat, gun in hand. A little after midnight he heard a sigh - a lion often sighs when he is hungry. The rustling in the dark told the colonel that the beast was close to the donkey. The colonel tried to keep quiet - but as he raised his gun it bumped against the plank and the lion at once left the donkey and began circling around the man.’

‘For two hours the horrified colonel heard the beast creeping round and round in the darkness, gradually coming closer. At any moment he expected the lion to rush the machan and perhaps break one of the flimsy poles and bring the whole thing to the ground.’

‘Suddenly something came flop against the back of the colonel’s head. He was so terrified that he nearly fell off the plank. He thought the lion had leaped upon him from behind. Then he realized it had only been an owl which had perhaps mistaken him for the branch of a tree.

His sudden movement when the owl struck him made the plank creak. The lion heard the sound and came growling up to the machan. There was just enough dawn light so that Colonel Patterson could see the dark form against the whitish undergrowth.’

‘He took careful aim and fired. The lion let out a terrific roar and began leaping about in all directions. The roars died down to groans and the groans to deep sighs - then nothing.’

‘Men from the camp a quarter of a mile away came running and when they saw that the “devil” was dead they beat tom-toms and blew horns and threw themselves down on the ground before Colonel Patterson crying, “Mabarak! Mabarak!” It means “Blessed One” or “Saviour”. They were sure the colonel must be some sort of god to have conquered this devil.’

‘But there was still the other man-eater to be reckoned with. It tried to get into the station where some men were sleeping, but the doors were too strong. It climbed up on the roof and tore away the corrugated iron sheets - it made a hole and dropped through. The men decided in a hurry that it was safer outside than in. They ran out, the lion after them.’

‘One man hid in a water-tank. The lion upset the tank, pulled the unlucky fellow out, and ate him.’

‘Then a very important man, Superintendent Ryall of the Railway Police, arrived in his own private railway car. He was a good shot and he knew it. He thought he could do in a day what Colonel Patterson had failed to do in nine months. Just give him one chance at that man-eater.’

‘He got his chance. He had his car shunted to a siding, and with two friends, Hubner and Parenti, prepared to wait all night for the lion. If they heard him grunting around, they would just go out and kill him. It would be as simple as that.’

‘One would keep watch while the other two slept. Ryall took the first watch, but he fell asleep. Hubner suddenly woke and found to his horror that the lion was inside the car. It had pushed open the sliding door and jumped in. The door slid back and closed.’

‘The lion leaped up on Ryall’s bed, struck the sleeping man’s head with his paw, sank its teeth into his chest, and that was the end of Ryall. The lion dragged the body off on to the floor and in doing so he disturbed Parenti, who woke to find a quarter of a ton of lion on top of him.’

‘Hubner jumped over the lion and got to the door. He couldn’t open it. The reason was that men who had been roused by the commotion were holding it shut so that the lion would not escape into the camp.’

‘It must have been a bad shock for those two fellows to find themselves shut in with a man-eating lion. Hubner groped for his gun, but before he could find it there was a terrific crash - the lion had broken through a window taking Ryall’s body with him.’

‘The next day a search was made for the police officer’s body. Nothing was found but his boots.’

‘It was Colonel Patterson after all, the man who was not a good shot, who finally potted the second’ man-eater. The animal tried to get at some men sleeping in a tree. The next night Patterson was up in that tree. The lion came, tried to climb the tree, and was shot. He roared off into the bushes. In the morning Patterson went looking for him.’

‘He saw what looked like a dead lion - but the “dead lion” suddenly came to life and charged him.’

‘The beast was too weak from loss of blood to finish the charge. He died only five yards from Patterson’s feet.’

‘Those two lions alone had killed more than a hundred men including twenty-nine Indians and two Europeans. The story was told and retold hundreds of times in newspapers and magazines all over the world. The two skins were mounted and put on view in the Field Museum and if you ever go to Chicago you can see them there.’

‘But you haven’t answered my question,’ Roger said. ‘Those lions are dead. But still we have man-eaters here. Why is that?’

‘For a very simple reason. The man-eaters of Tsavo often brought their cubs along and taught them how to hunt man and enjoy human flesh. Those cubs when they grew up taught their cubs. And so it goes on.’ ‘Why doesn’t it happen in other places too?’ ‘It does. Lions are the greatest man-killers in Africa. Not long ago in Malawi fourteen persons were eaten by lions in a month; in Mozambique, twenty in one month; in Ankole over in Uganda a dozen lions went on the rampage and it took eighteen months to kill them off. Near Entebbe the wise old lions discovered that whenever elephants raided plantations the people would come out to drive them away and in the confusion the lions could easily grab a few victims. Seventeen lions had to be killed before the people were safe. In Sanga a single lion killed forty-four people and another took eighty-five. It will go on as long as there are any lions.’ ‘Then why not get rid of all lions?’ ‘That’s like saying why not get rid of all motor cars. They cause a lot more deaths than the lions do. The lion is one of the most magnificent animals we have on this planet. People come from all over the world to see him. And even if lions kill one or two hundred Africans in a year that’s not many out of a population of three hundred million. Of course we don’t want them to get even one hundred. It’s not much comfort to a woman whose husband has been killed to know that most lions are not dangerous. Get your beauty sleep. We’ve got to find another of these rascals tomorrow morning.’

They didn’t have to wait until morning.

Roger no sooner got to-sleep than he was wakened by a snoring sound. That was strange. His brother never snored.

Could it be one of the railway men in the next tent? But it was closer than that. It must be Hal.

Roger hated to wake him up. His brother had had a hard day and needed his sleep. Roger tried to ignore the noise. He just buried his ears, one in the pillow and the other under the covers.

It was no use. He couldn’t get to sleep with that racket going on. He was just about to speak when he heard Hal’s voice.

‘Roger. Wake up. You’re snoring loud enough to wake the whole camp.’

‘I wasn’t snoring,’ Roger protested.

‘Guess you weren’t - because I still hear it. Must be a hyena prowling around outside.’

‘If it’s a hyena it’s not outside. It’s right here between us.’

‘We’ll soon see,’ Hal said and turned on his torch.

There was something between the two cots but it was a lot bigger than a hyena. There stood a super-size lion. He had a black mane. He looked remarkably like the beast they thought they had killed.

The loose tent flaps showed how he had entered. He was growling softly. He looked from one boy to the other, trying to decide which would make a better supper.

Hal grabbed for his gun. He had left a -45 revolver lying on a camp chair between the two beds so that either he or Roger could reach it in case of trouble.