THE REIGN OF TERROR
The lions seemed to have got a bad fright the night Brock and I sat up
in wait for them in the goods-wagon, for they kept away from Tsavo and
did not molest us in any way for some considerable time--not, in fact,
until long after Brock had left me and gone on safari (a caravan
journey) to Uganda. In this breathing space which they vouchsafed us,
it occurred to me that should they renew their attacks, a trap would
perhaps offer the best chance of getting at them, and that if I could
construct one in which a couple of coolies might be used as bait
without being subjected to any danger, the lions would be quite daring
enough to enter it in search of them and thus be caught. I accordingly
set to work at once, and in a short time managed to make a sufficiently
strong trap out of wooden sleepers, tram-rails, pieces of telegraph
wire, and a length of heavy chain. It was divided into two
compartments--one for the men and one for the lion. A sliding door at
one end admitted the former, and once inside this compartment they were
perfectly safe, as between them and the lion, if he entered the other,
ran a cross wall of iron rails only three inches apart, and embedded
both top and bottom in heavy wooden sleepers. The door which was to
admit the lion was, of course, at the opposite end of the structure,
but otherwise the whole thing was very much on the principle of the
ordinary rat-trap, except that it was not necessary for the lion to
seize the bait in order to send the door clattering down. This part of
the contrivance was arranged in the following manner. A heavy chain was
secured along the top part of the lion's doorway, the ends hanging down
to the ground on either side of the opening; and to these were
fastened, strongly secured by stout wire, short lengths of rails placed
about six inches apart. This made a sort of flexible door which could
be packed into a small space when not in use, and which abutted against
the top of the doorway when lifted up. The door was held in this
position by a lever made of a piece of rail, which in turn was kept in
its place by a wire fastened to one end and passing down to a spring
concealed in the ground inside the cage. As soon as the lion entered
sufficiently far into the trap, he would be bound to tread on the
spring; his weight on this would release the wire, and in an instant
down would come the door behind him; and he could not push it out in
any way, as it fell into a groove between two rails firmly embedded in
the ground.
In making this trap, which cost us a lot of work, we were rather at a
loss for want of tools to bore holes in the rails for the doorway, so
as to enable them to be fastened by the wire to the chain. It occurred
to me, however, that a hard-nosed bullet from my .303 would penetrate
the iron, and on making the experiment I was glad to find that a hole
was made as cleanly as if it had been punched out.
When the trap was ready I pitched a tent over it in order further to
deceive the lions, and built an exceedingly strong boma round it. One
small entrance was made at the back of the enclosure for the men, which
they were to close on going in by pulling a bush after them; and
another entrance just in front of the door of the cage was left open
for the lions. The wiseacres to whom I showed my invention were
generally of the opinion that the man-eaters would be too cunning to
walk into my parlour; but, as will be seen later, their predictions
proved false. For the first few nights I baited the trap myself, but
nothing happened except that I had a very sleepless and uncomfortable
time, and was badly bitten by mosquitoes.
As a matter of fact, it was some months before the lions attacked us
again, though from time to time we heard of their depredations in other
quarters. Not long after our night in the goods-wagon, two men were
carried off from railhead, while another was taken from a place called
Engomani, about ten miles away. Within a very short time, this latter
place was again visited by the brutes, two more men being seized, one
of whom was killed and eaten, and the other so badly mauled that he
died within few days. As I have said, however, we at Tsavo enjoyed
complete immunity from attack, and the coolies, believing that their
dreaded foes had permanently deserted the district, resumed all their
usual habits and occupations, and life in the camps returned to its
normal routine.
At last we were suddenly startled out of this feeling of security. One
dark night the familiar terror-stricken cries and screams awoke the
camps, and we knew that the "demons" had returned and had commenced a
new list of victims. On this occasion a number of men had been sleeping
outside their tents for the sake of coolness, thinking, of course, that
the lions had gone for good, when suddenly in the middle of the night
one of the brutes was discovered forcing its way through the boma. The
alarm was at once given, and sticks, stones and firebrands were hurled
in the direction of the intruder. All was of no avail, however, for the
lion burst into the midst of the terrified group, seized an unfortunate
wretch amid the cries and shrieks of his companions, and dragged him
off through the thick thorn fence. He was joined outside by the second
lion, and so daring had the two brutes become that they did not trouble
to carry their victim any further away, but devoured him within thirty
yards of the tent where he had been seized. Although several shots were
fired in their direction by the jemadar of the gang to which the coolie
belonged, they took no notice of these and did not attempt to move
until their horrible meal was finished. The few scattered fragments
that remained of the body I would not allow to be buried at once,
hoping that the lions would return to the spot the following night; and
on the chance of this I took up my station at nightfall in a convenient
tree. Nothing occurred to break the monotony of my watch, however,
except that I had a visit from a hyena, and the next morning I learned
that the lions had attacked another camp about two miles from
Tsavo--for by this time the camps were again scattered, as I had works
in progress all up and down the line. There the man-eaters had been
successful in obtaining a victim, whom, as in the previous instance,
they devoured quite close to the camp. How they forced their way
through the bomas without making a noise was, and still is, a mystery
to me; I should have thought that it was next to impossible for an
animal to get through at all. Yet they continually did so, and without
a sound being heard.
After this occurrence, I sat up every night for over a week near likely
camps, but all in vain. Either the lions saw me and then went
elsewhere, or else I was unlucky, for they took man after man from
different places without ever once giving me a chance of a shot at
them. This constant night watching was most dreary and fatiguing work,
but I felt that it was a duty that had to be undertaken, as the men
naturally looked to me for protection. In the whole of my life I have
never experienced anything more nerve-shaking than to hear the deep
roars of these dreadful monsters growing gradually nearer and nearer,
and to know that some one or other of us was doomed to be their victim
before morning dawned. Once they reached the vicinity of the camps, the
roars completely ceased, and we knew that they were stalking for their
prey. Shouts would then pass from camp to camp, "Khabar dar, bhaieon,
shaitan ata" ("Beware, brothers, the devil is coming"), but the warning
cries would prove of no avail, and sooner or later agonising shrieks
would break the silence, and another man would be missing from
roll-call next morning.
I was naturally very disheartened at being foiled in this way night
after night, and was soon at my wits' end to know what to do; it seemed
as if the lions were really "devils" after all and bore a charmed life.
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.
Within a few days of this the two brutes made a most ferocious attack
on the largest camp in the section, which for safety's sake was
situated within a stone's throw of Tsavo Station and close to a
Permanent Way Inspector's iron hut. Suddenly in the dead of night the
two man-eaters burst in among the terrified workmen, and even from my
boma, some distance away, I could plainly hear the panic-stricken
shrieking of the coolies. Then followed cries of "They've taken him;
they've taken him," as the brutes carried off their unfortunate victim
and began their horrible feast close beside the camp. The Inspector,
Mr. Dalgairns, fired over fifty shots in the direction in which he
heard the lions, but they were not to be frightened and calmly lay
there until their meal was finished. After examining the spot in the
morning, we at once set out to follow the brutes, Mr. Dalgairns feeling
confident that he had wounded one of them, as there was a trail on the
sand like that of the toes of a broken limb. After some careful
stalking, we suddenly found ourselves in the vicinity of the lions, and
were greeted with ominous growlings. Cautiously advancing and pushing
the bushes aside, we saw in the gloom what we at first took to be a
lion cub; closer inspection, however, showed it to be the remains of
the unfortunate coolie, which the man-eaters had evidently abandoned at
our approach. The legs, one arm and half the body had been eaten, and
it was the stiff fingers of the other arm trailing along the sand which
had left the marks we had taken to be the trail of a wounded lion. By
this time the beasts had retired far into the thick jungle where it was
impossible to follow them, so we had the remains of the coolie buried
and once more returned home disappointed.
Now the bravest men in the world, much less the ordinary Indian coolie,
will not stand constant terrors of this sort indefinitely. The whole
district was by this time thoroughly panic-stricken, and I was not at
all surprised, therefore, to find on my return to camp that same
afternoon (December 1) that the men had all struck work and were
waiting to speak to me. When I sent for them, they flocked to my boma
in a body and stated that they would not remain at Tsavo any longer for
anything or anybody; they had come from India on an agreement to work
for the Government, not to supply food for either lions or "devils." No
sooner had they delivered this ultimatum than a regular stampede took
place. Some hundreds of them stopped the first passing train by
throwing themselves on the rails in front of the engine, and then,
swarming on to the trucks and throwing in their possessions anyhow,
they fled from the accursed spot.
After this the railway works were completely stopped; and for the next
three weeks practically nothing was done but build "lion-proof" huts
for those workmen who had had sufficient courage to remain. It was a
strange and amusing sight to see these shelters perched on the top of
water-tanks, roofs and girders--anywhere for safety--while some even
went so far as to dig pits inside their tents, into which they
descended at night, covering the top over with heavy logs of wood.
Every good-sized tree in the camp had as many beds lashed on to it as
its branches would bear--and sometimes more. I remember that one night
when the camp was attacked, so many men swarmed on to one particular
tree that down it came with a crash, hurling its terror-stricken load
of shrieking coolies close to the very lions they were trying to avoid.
Fortunately for them, a victim had already been secured, and the brutes
were too busy devouring him to pay attention to anything else.