LITMIR.BIZ

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transport-riding too.

      The charm of a life of freedom and complete independence—a life in which a man goes as and where he lists, and carries his home with him—is great indeed; but great too was the fact that hunting would go with it.

      How the little things that mark a new departure stamp themselves indelibly on the memory! A flower in the hedgerow where the roads divide will mark the spot in one’s mind for ever; and yet a million more, before and after, and all as beautiful, are passed unseen. In memory, it is all as fresh, bright and glorious as ever: only the years have gone. The start, the trek along the plateau, the crystal streams, the ferns and trees, the cool pure air; and, through and over all, the quite intoxicating sense of freedom! Then came the long slow climb to Spitzkop where the Berg is highest and where our ascent began. For there, with Africa’s contrariness, the highest parts banked up and buttressed by gigantic spurs are most accessible from below, while the lower edges of the plateau are cut off sheer like the walls of some great fortress. There, near Spitzkop, we looked down upon the promised land; there, stood upon the outmost edge, as a diver on his board, and paused and looked and breathed before we took the plunge.

      It is well to pitch one’s expectations low, and so stave off disappointments. But counsels of perfection are wasted on the young, and when accident combines with the hopefulness of youth to lay the colours on in all their gorgeousness, what chance has Wisdom?

      “See here, young feller!” said Wisdom, “don’t go fill yourself up with tomfool notions ’bout lions and tigers waitin’ behind every bush. You won’t see one in a twelvemonth! Most like you won’t see a buck for a week! You don’t know what to do, what to wear, how to walk, how to look, or what to look for; and you’ll make as much noise as a traction engine. This ain’t open country: it’s bush; they can see and hear, and you can’t. An’ as for big game, you won’t see any for a long while yet, so don’t go fool yourself!”

      Excellent! But fortune in a sportive mood ordained that the very first thing we saw as we outspanned at Saunderson’s on the very first day in the Bushveld, was the fresh skin of a lion stretched out to dry. What would the counsels of Solomon himself have weighed against that wet skin?

      Wisdom scratched its head and stared: “Well, I am completely sugared!”

      Of course it was a fluke. No lions had been seen in the locality for several years; but the beginner, filled with all the wildest expectations, took no heed of that. If the wish be father to the thought, then surely fact may well beget conviction. It was so in this case, at any rate, and thus not all the cold assurances of Wisdom could banish visions of big game as plentiful as partridges.

      A party had set out upon a tiger hunt to clear out one of those marauders who used to haunt the kloofs of the Berg and make descents upon the Kaffir herds of goats and sheep; but there was a special interest in this particular tiger, for he had killed one of the white hunters in the last attempt to get at him a few weeks before. Starting from the store, the party of men and boys worked their way towards the kloof, and the possibility of coming across a lion never entered their heads. No notice was taken of smaller game put up from time to time as they moved carelessly along; a rustle on the left of the line was ignored, and Bill Saunderson was as surprised as Bill ever could be to see a lion facing him at something like six or seven yards. The lion, with head laid level and tail flicking ominously, half crouched for its spring. Bill’s bullet glanced along the skull, peeling off the skin. “It was a bad shot,” he said afterwards, in answer to the beginner’s breathless questions. “He wasn’t hurt: just sank a little like a pointer when you check him; but before he steadied up again I took for the nose and got him. You see,” he added thoughtfully, “a lion’s got no forehead: it is all hair.”

      That was about all he had to say; but, little store as he may have set on it, the tip was never forgotten and proved of much value to at least one of our party years afterwards. To this day the picture of a lion brings up that scene—the crouching beast, faced by a man with a long brown beard, solemn face, and clear unfaltering eyes; the swift yet quiet action of reloading; and the second shot an inch or so lower, because “a lion’s got no forehead: it’s all hair.”

      The shooting of a lion, fair and square, and face to face, was the Blue Riband of the Bush, and no detail would have seemed superfluous; but Bill, whose eye nothing could escape, had, like many great hunters, a laggard tongue. Only now and then a look of grave amusement lighted up his face to show he recognised the hungry enthusiasm and his own inability to satisfy it. The skin with the grazed stripe along the nose, and the broken skull, were handled and looked at many times, and the story was pumped from every Kaffir—all voluble and eager, but none eye-witnesses. Bob, the sociable and more communicative, who had been nearest his brother, was asked a hundred questions, but all he had to say was that the grass was too long for him to see what happened: he reckoned that it was “a pretty near thing after the first shot; but Bill’s all right!”

      To me it was an absurd and tiresome affectation to show interest in any other topic, and when, during that evening, conversation strayed to other subjects, it seemed waste of time and priceless opportunity. Bob responded good-naturedly to many crude attempts to head them back to the entrancing theme, but the professional interest in rates, loads, rivers, roads, disease, drought, and ‘fly,’ was strong in the older transport-riders, as it should have been, but, for the time at least, was not, in me. If diplomacy failed, however, luck was not all out; for when all the pet subjects of the road had been thrashed out, and it was about time to turn in, a stray question brought the reward of patience.

      “Have you heard if Jim reached Durban all right?”

      “Yes! Safely shipped.”

      “You got some one to take him right through?”

      “No! A Dutchman took him to Lydenburg, and I got Tom Hardy, going back empty, to take him along from there.”

      “What about feeding?”

      “I sent some goats,” said Bob, smiling for a moment at some passing thought, and then went on: “Tom said he had an old span that wouldn’t mind it. We loaded him up at Parker’s, and I cleared out before he got the cattle up. But they tell me there was a gay jamboree when it came to inspanning; and as soon as they got up to the other waggons and the young bullocks winded Jim, they started off with their tails up—a regular stampede, voorloopers and drivers yelling like mad, all the loose things shaking out of the waggons, and Tom nearly in a fit from running, shouting and swearing.”

      Judging by the laughter, there was only one person present who did not understand the joke, and I had to ask—with some misgiving—who was this Jim who needed so much care and feeding, and caused such a scare.

      There was another burst of laughter as they guessed my thoughts, and it was Bob who answered me: “Only a lion, lad—not a wild man or a lunatic! Only a young lion! Sold him to the Zoo, and had to deliver him in Durban.”

      “Well, you fairly took me in with the name!”

      “Oh! Jim? Well that’s his pet name. His real name is Dabulamanzi. Jim, my hunting boy, caught him, so we call him Jim out of compliment,” he added with a grin. “But Jim called him Dabulamanzi, also out of compliment, and I think that was pretty good for a nigger.”

      “You see,” said Bob, for the benefit of those who were not up in local history, “Dabulamanzi, the big fighting General in the Zulu War, was Jim’s own chief and leader; and the name means ‘The one who conquers the waters.’ ”

      Then one of the others exclaimed: “Oh! Of course, that’s how you got him, isn’t it: caught him in a river? Tell us what did happen, Bob. What’s the truth of it? It seemed a bit steep as I heard it.”

      “Well, it’s really simple enough. We came right on to the lioness waiting for us, and I got her; and then there were shouts from the boys, and I saw a couple of cubs, pretty well grown, making off in the grass. This boy Jim legged it after one of them, a cub about as big as a Newfoundland dog—not so high, but longer. I followed as fast as I could, but he was a big Zulu and went like a buck, yelling like mad all the time. We were in the bend of

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