As I Have Said
Before, Tracking Them Through The Jungle Was A
Hopeless Task; But As Something Had To Be Done
To Keep Up The Men's Spirits, I Spent Many A
Weary Day Crawling On My Hands And Knees
Through The Dense Undergrowth Of The Exasperating
Wilderness Around Us.
As a matter of
fact, if I had come up with the lions on any
of these expeditions, it
Was much more likely
that they would have added me to their list of
victims than that I should have succeeded in
killing either of them, as everything would have
been in their favour. About this time, too, I
had many helpers, and several officers - civil,
naval and military - came to Tsavo from the
coast and sat up night after night in order to get
a shot at our daring foes. All of us, however,
met with the same lack of success, and the lions
always seemed capable of avoiding the watchers,
while succeeding, at the same time in obtaining a
victim.
I have a very vivid recollection of one
particular night when the brutes seized a man from
the railway station and brought him close to
my camp to devour. I could plainly hear them
crunching the bones, and the sound of their
dreadful purring filled the air and rang in my
ears for days afterwards. The terrible thing
was to feel so helpless; it was useless to
attempt to go out, as of course the poor fellow
was dead, and in addition it was so pitch dark
as to make it impossible to see anything.
Some half a dozen workmen, who lived in a
small enclosure close to mine, became so terrified
on hearing the lions at their meal that they
shouted and implored me to allow them to come
inside my boma. This I willingly did, but soon
afterwards I remembered that one man had been
lying ill in their camp, and on making enquiry I
found that they had callously left him behind
alone. I immediately took some men with me to
bring him to my boma, but on entering his tent I
saw by the light of the lantern that the poor
fellow was beyond need of safety. He had died
of shock at being deserted by his companions.
From this time matters gradually became
worse and worse. Hitherto, as a rule, only
one of the man-eaters had made the attack and
had done the foraging, while the other waited
outside in the bush; but now they began to
change their tactics, entering the bomas together
and each seizing a victim. In this way two
Swahili porters were killed during the last week
of November, one being immediately carried off
and devoured. The other was heard moaning
for a long time, and when his terrified companions
at last summoned up sufficient courage to go to
his assistance, they found him stuck fast in the
bushes of the boma, through which for once the
lion had apparently been unable to drag him.
He was still alive when I saw him next morning,
but so terribly mauled that he died before he could
be got to the hospital.
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