After This
There Was Intense Silence Again For A Second Or
Two, Then With A Sudden Bound A Huge Body
Sprang At Us.
"The lion!" I shouted, and we
both fired almost simultaneously - not a moment
too soon, for in another second the brute would
assuredly have landed inside the wagon.
As it
was, he must have swerved off in his spring,
probably blinded by the flash and frightened by
the noise of the double report which was
increased a hundredfold by the reverberation of
the hollow iron roof of the truck. Had we not
been very much on the alert, he would
undoubtedly have got one of us, and we realised that we
had had a very lucky and very narrow escape.
The next morning we found Brock's bullet
embedded in the sand close to a footprint; it
could not have missed the lion by more than
an inch or two. Mine was nowhere to be found.
Thus ended my first direct encounter with one
of the man-eaters.
CHAPTER IV
THE BUILDING OF THE TSAVO BRIDGE
During all this troublesome period the
construction of the railway had been going steadily
forward, and the first important piece of work
which I had commenced on arrival was
completed. This was the widening of a rock cutting
through which the railway ran just before it,
reached the river. In the hurry of pushing on
the laying of the line, just enough of the rock
had originally been cut away to allow room for an
engine to pass, and consequently any material
which happened to, project outside the wagons
or trucks caught on the jagged faces of the
cutting. I myself saw the door of a guard's van,
which had been left ajar, smashed to atoms in
this way; and accordingly I put a gang of
rock-drillers to work at once and soon had ample
room made for all traffic to pass unimpeded.
While this was going on, another gang of men
were laying the foundations of a girder bridge
which was to span a gully between this cutting and
Tsavo Station. This would have taken too long
to erect when railhead was at the place, so a
diversion had been made round it, the temporary
track leading down almost to the bed of the
nullah and up again on the further side. When
the foundations and abutments were ready, the
gully was spanned by an iron girder, the slopes
leading up to it banked up on either side, and the
permanent way laid on an easy grade.
Then, also, a water supply had to be
established; and this meant some very pleasant work
for me in taking levels up the banks of the
river under the cool shade of the palms. While
doing this, I often took my camp-kit with me,
and a luncheon served in the wilds, with
occasionally a friend to share it - when a friend was
available - was delightful. On one occasion in
particular, I went a long way up the river and was
accompanied by a young member of my staff.
The day had been exceedingly hot and we were
both correspondingly tired when our work was
finished, so my companion suggested that we
should build a raft and float down-stream home.
I was rather doubtful, of the feasibility of the
scheme, but nevertheless he decided to give it a
trial.
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