CHAPTER II
WHAT WAS FOUND IN THE POOL
"Something over a fortnight had passed since the night when I lost
half-a-sovereign and found twelve hundred and fifty pounds in looking
for it, and instead of that horrid hole, for which, after all,
Eldorado was hardly a misnomer, a very different scene stretched away
before us clad in the silver robe of the moonlight. We were camped--
Harry and I, two Kaffirs, a Scotch cart, and six oxen--on the swelling
side of a great wave of bushclad land. Just where we had made our
camp, however, the bush was very sparse, and only grew about in
clumps, while here and there were single flat-topped mimosa-trees. To
our right a little stream, which had cut a deep channel for itself in
the bosom of the slope, flowed musically on between banks green with
maidenhair, wild asparagus, and many beautiful grasses. The bed-rock
here was red granite, and in the course of centuries of patient
washing the water had hollowed out some of the huge slabs in its path
into great troughs and cups, and these we used for bathing-places. No
Roman lady, with her baths of porphyry or alabaster, could have had a
more delicious spot to bathe herself than we found within fifty yards
of our skerm, or rough inclosure of mimosa thorn, that we had dragged
together round the cart to protect us from the attacks of lions. That
there were several of these brutes about, I knew from their spoor,
though we had neither heard nor seen them.
"Our bath was a little nook where the eddy of the stream had washed
away a mass of soil, and on the edge of it there grew a most beautiful
old mimosa thorn. Beneath the thorn was a large smooth slab of granite
fringed all round with maidenhair and other ferns, that sloped gently
down to a pool of the clearest sparkling water, which lay in a bowl of
granite about ten feet wide by five feet deep in the centre. Here to
this slab we went every morning to bathe, and that delightful bath is
among the most pleasant of my hunting reminiscences, as it is also,
for reasons which will presently appear, among the most painful.
"It was a lovely night. Harry and I sat to the windward of the fire,
where the two Kaffirs were busily employed in cooking some impala
steaks off a buck which Harry, to his great joy, had shot that
morning, and were as perfectly contented with ourselves and the world
at large as two people could possibly be. The night was beautiful, and
it would require somebody with more words on the tip of his tongue
than I have to describe properly the chastened majesty of those
moonlit wilds. Away for ever and for ever, away to the mysterious
north, rolled the great bush ocean over which the silence brooded.
There beneath us a mile or more to the right ran the wide Oliphant,
and mirror-like flashed back the moon, whose silver spears were
shivered on its breast, and then tossed in twisted lines of light far
and wide about the mountains and the plain. Down upon the river-banks
grew great timber-trees that through the stillness pointed solemnly to
Heaven, and the beauty of the night lay upon them like a cloud.
Everywhere was silence--silence in the starred depths, silence on the
bosom of the sleeping earth. Now, if ever, great thoughts might rise
in a man's mind, and for a space he might forget his littleness in the
sense that he partook of the pure immensity about him.
"'Hark! what was that?'
"From far away down by the river there comes a mighty rolling sound,
then another, and another. It is the lion seeking his meat.
"I saw Harry shiver and turn a little pale. He was a plucky boy
enough, but the roar of a lion heard for the first time in the solemn
bush veldt at night is apt to shake the nerves of any lad.
"'Lions, my boy,' I said; 'they are hunting down by the river there;
but I don't think that you need make yourself uneasy. We have been
here three nights now, and if they were going to pay us a visit I
think that they would have done so before this. However, we will make
up the fire.'
"'Here, Pharaoh, do you and Jim-Jim get some more wood before we go to
sleep, else the cats will be purring round you before morning.'
"Pharaoh, a great brawny Swazi, who had been working for me at
Pilgrims' Rest, laughed, rose, and stretched himself, then calling to
Jim-Jim to bring the axe and a reim, started off in the moonlight
towards a clump of sugar-bush where we cut our fuel from some dead
trees. He was a fine fellow in his way, was Pharaoh, and I think that
he had been named Pharaoh because he had an Egyptian cast of
countenance and a royal sort of swagger about him. But his way was a
somewhat peculiar way, on account of the uncertainty of his temper,
and very few people could get on with him; also if he could find
liquor he would drink like a fish, and when he drank he became
shockingly bloodthirsty. These were his bad points; his good ones were
that, like most people of the Zulu blood, he became exceedingly
attached if he took to you at all; he was a hard-working and
intelligent man, and about as dare-devil and plucky a fellow at a
pinch as I have ever had to do with. He was about five-and-thirty
years of age or so, but not a 'keshla' or ringed man. I believe that
he had got into trouble in some way in Swaziland, and the authorities
of his tribe would not allow him to assume the ring, and that is why
he came to work at the gold-fields. The other man, or rather lad, Jim-
Jim, was a Mapoch Kaffir, or Knobnose, and even in the light of
subsequent events I fear I cannot speak very well of him. He was an
idle and careless young rascal, and only that very morning I had to
tell Pharaoh to give him a beating for letting the oxen stray, which
Pharaoh did with the greatest gusto, although he was by way of being
very fond of Jim-Jim. Indeed, I saw him consoling Jim-Jim afterwards
with a pinch of snuff from his own ear-box, whilst he explained to him
that the next time it came in the way of duty to flog him, he meant to
thrash him with the other hand, so as to cross the old cuts and make a
"pretty pattern" on his back.
"Well, off they went, though Jim-Jim did not at all like leaving the
camp at that hour, even when the moonlight was so bright, and in due
course returned safely enough with a great bundle of wood. I laughed
at Jim-Jim, and asked him if he had seen anything, and he said yes, he
had; he had seen two large yellow eyes staring at him from behind a
bush, and heard something snore.
"As, however, on further investigation the yellow eyes and the snore
appeared to have existed only in Jim-Jim's lively imagination, I was
not greatly disturbed by this alarming report; but having seen to the
making-up of the fire, got into the skerm and went quietly to sleep
with Harry by my side.
"Some hours afterwards I woke up with a start. I don't know what woke
me. The moon had gone down, or at least was almost hidden behind the
soft horizon of bush, only her red rim being visible. Also a wind had
sprung up and was driving long hurrying lines of cloud across the
starry sky, and altogether a great change had come over the mood of
the night. By the look of the sky I judged that we must be about two
hours from day-break.
"The oxen, which were as usual tied to the disselboom of the Scotch
cart, were very restless--they kept snuffling and blowing, and rising
up and lying down again, so I at once suspected that they must wind
something. Presently I knew what it was that they winded, for within
fifty yards of us a lion roared, not very loud, but quite loud enough
to make my heart come into my mouth.
"Pharaoh was sleeping on the other side of the cart, and, looking
beneath it, I saw him raise his head and listen.
"'Lion, Inkoos,' he whispered, 'lion!'
"Jim-Jim also jumped up, and by the faint light I could see that he
was in a very great fright indeed.
"Thinking that it was as well to be prepared for emergencies, I told
Pharaoh to throw wood upon the fire, and woke up Harry, who I verily
believe was capable of sleeping happily through the crack of doom. He
was a little scared at first, but presently the excitement of the
position came home to him, and he grew quite anxious to see his
majesty face to face. I got my rifle handy and gave Harry his--a
Westley Richards falling block, which is a very useful gun for a
youth, being light and yet a good killing rifle, and then we waited.
"For a long time nothing happened, and I began to think that the best
thing we could do would be to go to sleep again, when suddenly I heard
a sound more like a cough than a roar within about twenty yards of the
skerm. We all looked out, but could see nothing; and then followed
another period of suspense. It was very trying to the nerves, this
waiting for an attack that might be developed from any quarter or
might not be developed at all; and though I was an old hand at this
sort of business I was anxious about Harry, for it is wonderful how
the presence of anybody to whom one is attached unnerves a man in
moments of danger. I know, although it was now chilly enough, I could
feel the perspiration running down my nose, and in order to relieve
the strain on my attention employed myself in watching a beetle which
appeared to be attracted by the firelight, and was sitting before it
thoughtfully rubbing his antennæ against each other.
"Suddenly, the beetle gave such a jump that he nearly pitched headlong
into the fire, and so did we all--gave jumps, I mean, and no wonder,
for from right under the skerm fence there came a most frightful roar
--a roar that literally made the Scotch cart shake and took the breath
out of me.
"Harry made an exclamation, Jim-Jim howled outright, while the poor
oxen, who were terrified almost out of their hides, shivered and lowed
piteously.
"The night was almost entirely dark now, for the moon had quite set,
and the clouds had covered up the stars, so that the only light we had
came from the fire, which by this time was burning up brightly again.
But, as you know, firelight is absolutely useless to shoot by, it is
so uncertain, and besides, it penetrates but a very little way into
the darkness, although if one is in the dark outside, one can see it
from far away.
"Presently the oxen, after standing still for a moment, suddenly
winded the lion and did what I feared they would do--began to 'skrek,'
that is, to try and break loose from the trektow to which they were
tied, to rush off madly into the wilderness. Lions know of this habit
on the part of oxen, which are, I do believe, the most foolish animals
under the sun, a sheep being a very Solomon compared to them; and it
is by no means uncommon for a lion to get in such a position that a
herd or span of oxen may wind him, skrek, break their reims, and rush
off into the bush. Of course, once there, they are helpless in the
dark; and then the lion chooses the one that he loves best and eats
him at his leisure.
"Well, round and round went our six poor oxen, nearly trampling us to
death in their mad rush; indeed, had we not hastily tumbled out of the
way, we should have been trodden to death, or at the least seriously
injured. As it was, Harry was run over, and poor Jim-Jim being caught
by the trektow somewhere beneath the arm, was hurled right across the
skerm, landing by my side only some paces off.
"Snap went the disselboom of the cart beneath the transverse strain
put upon it. Had it not broken the cart would have overset; as it was,
in another minute, oxen, cart, trektow, reims, broken disselboom, and
everything were soon tied in one vast heaving, plunging, bellowing,
and seemingly inextricable knot.
"For a moment or two this state of affairs took my attention off from
the lion that had caused it, but whilst I was wondering what on earth
was to be done next, and how we should manage if the cattle broke
loose into the bush and were lost--for cattle frightened in this
manner will so straight away like mad things--my thoughts were
suddenly recalled to the lion in a very painful fashion.
"For at that moment I perceived by the light of the fire a kind of
gleam of yellow travelling through the air towards us.
"'The lion! the lion!' holloaed Pharaoh, and as he did so, he, or
rather she, for it was a great gaunt lioness, half wild no doubt with
hunger, lit right in the middle of the skerm, and stood there in the
smoky gloom lashing her tail and roaring. I seized my rifle and fired
it at her, but what between the confusion, my agitation, and the
uncertain light, I missed her, and nearly shot Pharaoh. The flash of
the rifle, however, threw the whole scene into strong relief, and a
wild sight it was I can tell you--with the seething mass of oxen
twisted all round the cart, in such a fashion that their heads looked
as though they were growing out of their rumps; and their horns seemed
to protrude from their backs; the smoking fire with just a blaze in
the heart of the smoke; Jim-Jim in the foreground, where the oxen had
thrown him in their wild rush, stretched out there in terror, and then
as a centre to the picture the great gaunt lioness glaring round with
hungry yellow eyes, roaring and whining as she made up her mind what
to do.
"It did not take her long, however, just the time that it takes a
flash to die into darkness, for, before I could fire again or do
anything, with a most fiendish snort she sprang upon poor Jim-Jim.
"I heard the unfortunate lad shriek, and then almost instantly I saw
his legs thrown into the air. The lioness had seized him by the neck,
and with a sudden jerk thrown his body over her back so that his legs
hung down upon the further side.[*] Then, without the slightest
hesitation, and apparently without any difficulty, she cleared the
skerm face at a single bound, and bearing poor Jim-Jim with her
vanished into the darkness beyond, in the direction of the bathing-
place that I have already described. We jumped up perfectly mad with
horror and fear, and rushed wildly after her, firing shots at
haphazard on the chance that she would be frightened by them into
dropping her prey, but nothing could we see, and nothing could we
hear. The lioness had vanished into the darkness, taking Jim-Jim with
her, and to attempt to follow her till daylight was madness. We should
only expose ourselves to the risk of a like fate.
[*] I have known a lion carry a two-year-old ox over a stone wall four
feet high in this fashion, and a mile away into the bush beyond.
He was subsequently poisoned by strychnine put into the carcass of
the ox, and I still have his claws.--Editor.
"So with scared and heavy hearts we crept back to the skerm, and sat
down to wait for the dawn, which now could not be much more than an
hour off. It was absolutely useless to try even to disentangle the
oxen till then, so all that was left for us to do was to sit and
wonder how it came to pass that the one should be taken and the other
left, and to hope against hope that our poor servant might have been
mercifully delivered from the lion's jaws.
"At length the faint dawn came stealing like a ghost up the long slope
of bush, and glinted on the tangled oxen's horns, and with white and
frightened faces we got up and set to the task of disentangling the
oxen, till such time as there should be light enough to enable us to
follow the trail of the lioness which had gone off with Jim-Jim. And
here a fresh trouble awaited us, for when at last with infinite
difficulty we had disentangled the great helpless brutes, it was only
to find that one of the best of them was very sick. There was no
mistake about the way he stood with his legs slightly apart and his
head hanging down. He had got the redwater, I was sure of it. Of all
the difficulties connected with life and travelling in South Africa
those connected with oxen are perhaps the worst. The ox is the most
exasperating animal in the world, a negro excepted. He has absolutely
no constitution, and never neglects an opportunity of falling sick of
some mysterious disease. He will get thin upon the slightest
provocation, and from mere maliciousness die of 'poverty'; whereas it
is his chief delight to turn round and refuse to pull whenever he
finds himself well in the centre of a river, or the waggon-wheel
nicely fast in a mud hole. Drive him a few miles over rough roads and
you will find that he is footsore; turn him loose to feed and you will
discover that he has run away, or if he has not run away he has of
malice aforethought eaten 'tulip' and poisoned himself. There is
always something with him. The ox is a brute. It was of a piece with
his accustomed behaviour for the one in question to break out--on
purpose probably--with redwater just when a lion had walked off with
his herd. It was exactly what I should have expected, and I was
therefore neither disappointed nor surprised.
"Well, it was no use crying as I should almost have liked to do,
because if this ox had redwater it was probable that the rest of them
had it too, although they had been sold to me as 'salted,' that is,
proof against such diseases as redwater and lungsick. One gets
hardened to this sort of thing in South Africa in course of time, for
I suppose in no other country in the world is the waste of animal life
so great.
"So taking my rifle and telling Harry to follow me (for we had to
leave Pharaoh to look after the oxen--Pharaoh's lean kine, I called
them), I started to see if anything could be found of or appertaining
to the unfortunate Jim-Jim. The ground round our little camp was hard
and rocky, and we could not hit off any spoor of the lioness, though
just outside the skerm was a drop or two of blood. About three hundred
yards from the camp, and a little to the right, was a patch of sugar
bush mixed up with the usual mimosa, and for this I made, thinking
that the lioness would have been sure to take her prey there to devour
it. On we pushed through the long grass that was bent down beneath the
weight of the soaking dew. In two minutes we were wet through up to
the thighs, as wet as though we had waded through water. In due
course, however, we reached the patch of bush, and by the grey light
of the morning cautiously and slowly pushed our way into it. It was
very dark under the trees, for the sun was not yet up, so we walked
with the most extreme care, half expecting every minute to come across
the lioness licking the bones of poor Jim-Jim. But no lioness could we
see, and as for Jim-Jim there was not even a finger-joint of him to be
found. Evidently they had not come here.
"So pushing through the bush we proceeded to hunt every other likely
spot, but with the same result.
"'I suppose she must have taken him right away,' I said at last, sadly
enough. 'At any rate he will be dead by now, so God have mercy on him,
we can't help him. What's to be done now?'
"'I suppose that we had better wash ourselves in the pool, and then go
back and get something to eat. I am filthy,' said Harry.
"This was a practical if a somewhat unfeeling suggestion. At least it
struck me as unfeeling to talk of washing when poor Jim-Jim had been
so recently eaten. However, I did not let my sentiment carry me away,
so we went down to the beautiful spot that I have described, to wash.
I was the first to reach it, which I did by scrambling down the ferny
bank. Then I turned round, and started back with a yell--as well I
might, for almost from beneath my feet there came a most awful snarl.
"I had lit nearly upon the back of the lioness, that had been sleeping
on the slab where we always stood to dry ourselves after bathing. With
a snarl and a growl, before I could do anything, before I could even
cock my rifle, she had bounded right across the crystal pool, and
vanished over the opposite bank. It was all done in an instant, as
quick as thought.
"She had been sleeping on the slab, and oh, horror! what was that
sleeping beside her? It was the red remains of poor Jim-Jim, lying on
a patch of blood-stained rock.
"'Oh! father, father!' shrieked Harry, 'look in the water!'
"I looked. There, floating in the centre of the lovely tranquil pool,
was Jim-Jim's head. The lioness had bitten it right off, and it had
rolled down the sloping rock into the water.
