* This tale may seem obscure, I suppose, if read in modern
English. It may be interpreted in the light of two ideas:
(1) The African idea about leanthropy or transmutation of man
into lion, an idea likely to linger on, I should think.
(2) An idea prevalent as it seems in our Europe of old '. . . the
idea that when a witch in animal form is wounded, say by a blow
or a shot, the natural wound will appear on the human body when
the witch returns to her own person.'
But I have topsy-turvied (2) in my tale. A.S.C.
I saw the lion with my own eyes, his shaggy head haloed by the
rising moon. The Mashona who was with me had far sharper eyes
than mine. He saw a dark scar across its brow. He would know that
lion again, he told me. It was not a gun-shot wound it carried.
Surely it was the caress of a brother lion.
The trader's road led down from the half-deserted kraal to the
drift. It forked into two wagon ways with a huge rock to part
them. There on the rock stood the lion expectant. That may not be
a heraldic term, but it is a true description of him as I saw
him. We watched him from the height above for what seemed a
longish time.
Then in haste I stole back to the desolate kraal that I might
find Trooper No. 2. Had he not the chance of his life now to
shoot a lion? I found him in the kraal, angry with himself and
swearing at his Black Watch boy who suffered him silently. While
he swore at him I gave him some idea of what I was thinking, as
to his need of humility. Had I not seen him run ten minutes
before? All this took time. When at last his flow of words dried
up and he came with me, we were too late. The lion was no longer
against the sky-line. He had taken cover in the bush below. We
heard him there once or twice, but we saw him no more. This is
how these things came about.
I had traveled into that forlorn country the day before, looking
for Carrot. He had been a pioneer and a reputed hero, not so many
years gone past. Now he was an Ishmael, receding and receding
before the tide of civilization. Like the eagle in Byron's lines
on Kirke White, he might blame himself, or at any rate credit
himself, for the turn things had taken. He had winged the shaft
that was draining his life, or at least his livelihood. He had
helped to bring on a native war that had expedited matters. He
had helped to wind it up in a very few months.
So now the abomination of civilization, as he deemed it, was set
up in high places of the land. It was increasingly hard for him
to be a law to himself anywhere within the land's limits. He had
retired further and further yet again into the fastnesses of the
hill-country. Yet civilization had a graceless way of looking him
up.
He was just by the Portuguese border when I visited him. I knew
him of old, and I wanted him to let his eldest son come to
school. He had told me a year ago to ask again.
I went through a frowning gorge of rocks to the part-deserted
kraal, and found him sitting at his beer with three native
courtiers. He was a tall West-countryman, with a ragged dark
beard. His khaki was badly stained, and his hair was poking
through his hat. He spoke the tongue of this southern country
most volubly. He also reinforced it with ne'er-do-well words from
Europe that did her no particular credit. Just as I came up a
quarrel was in full swing. A free fight followed. Carrot broke a
black earthen pot over the head of one of those three. Out came
his swarthy wife that he had paid many cattle for, with his baby
in a goat-skin at her back; also his other children, aged about
eight, six, five, and four.
There was much confused crying and protesting. But Carrot
dominated the scene in the end. The courtiers retired crying
'Shame!' and under protest. The most truculent of them was
bleeding freely from his broken head. I followed him to their
hamlet far down among the rocks and bandaged him. I camped
outside the Carrot homestead that night and the next day, and
learned something of the family's way of life.
Carrot was shooting big buck sable and roan without a license, I
gathered. He was trading cattle for most of the venison that he
amassed. He had by now a goodly herd feeding in a green vlei near
the border. By and by he would sell them, he thought, and set
himself up in a wayside public-house. That was to say, if an
ungrateful Government could be squared somehow. He chuckled at my
protests. He had many tales in the speech of North Devon to tell
me.
Many of them concerned the police, and were not altogether
unkindly, though disparaging. To Carrot, who could both ride and
find his way about the veld, the police seemed often deficient as
pathfinders and horsemen. The story he told about the five
European members of a police camp delighted me. One had got lost.
He who went out to look for him had got lost also. There was an
epidemic or something of the sort just then among the native
police, who, as a rule, piloted the troopers about and did
nurses' work at need. One after another of the remaining three
Europeans was engulfed in this exhaustive search. Then a grass
fire effaced the empty police camp. Carrot ended with a
speculation as to whether they were still looking for one another
or whether they had begun to miss their camp yet.
He was good in a feudal way, I gathered a severely feudal way to
his retainers. He threw pots but seldom. His eldest child he
seemed to worship in some sort of pagan fashion of his own.
The boy might have sat for a child Dionysos with his leopard-skin,
and his arm of golden copper thrown about his father's pot of
beer; black and big that pot should be painted.
No, his father wouldn't let him come away with me; at least, not
this year. He graciously hesitated twice or thrice. But he ended
with the same proposal each time a drink and a postponement of
decision. I wanted neither. I would not go on wasting my days on
postponements, and I meant to start with dawn on the second
morning. But at sunset the night before there had been a
surprise.
Just as the sun went down a strange native appeared in hot haste
and told a tale.
Two ma-Johnnies were coming down the wagon road with five or six,
native police and camp-followers. The Government was looking up
Carrot once again. He had had two pots of beer that afternoon, or
most of them, and was not quite himself, otherwise he might have
gone his way at his ease.
But as it was, a ghastly row woke the echoes, what with the
children crying, and the father singing and swearing, and the
mother scolding, as they tied up their bundles. Carrot kept
untying his in good humor, and searching for patent medicines and
a safety razor that could not be found. Then after he had started
he came back at least twice to give me a parting word. Meanwhile
the western glow began to be rivaled by an eastern glow. The moon
was brimming over the horizon. The Philistines of civilization
were almost riding into the kraal before Carrot had really gone.
My Adullamite friend was slow indeed with his farewells. Would he
ever be through with them? 'Good-bye!' he said. He was enjoying
the emergency hugely now that he was sobered. 'You'd better walk
down the road and meet 'em. Do remind 'em not to lose their mules
this time. No, I won't worry you to see me off. They might ask
questions. You must honor and obey the King and those who are set
in authority. But you won't want to give me away exactly. So
good-bye till next time!'
A hundred yards from Carrot's dwelling I met Troopers 1 and 2
Trooper No. I dusty and disheveled and livid with fever a lanky,
dark man; Trooper No. 2 trim and ruddy. The former could hardly
sit his mule as he trotted up to me. 'Have you seen Carrot?' he
asked in a sort of groan. I said 'Good evening,' and passed on.
Promptly he gasped to two native police to bring me along, and
went his way forward to explore the ruinous kraal. He felt
doubtful whether I was or was not Carrot, he told me afterwards.
He went for the three Carrot huts at once and began to search
them. There were no finds there. Then he questioned me sharply.
Two of his black watch knew me by sight, and I was soon set free
to go my ways. Then he gave clear decisive orders to No. 2 to
ride for all he was worth to the drift. 'The river's the border,'
he said; 'it's his old game to dodge across it. If he's taken his
kids with him he can't cross anywhere. It's a big river, and
there's only the one drift so far as I know. Go for the drift,
man, and we'll have him yet!'
So Trooper No. 2, with the glory-thirst upon him, bustled off
with one black boy and four black men in red and blue.
After he was safely out of the way Trooper No. I fainted. It had
been hard for him to keep going so long as he had. I spread a
blanket for him and made him a pillow. He was not long in coming
round. Meanwhile the great moon had climbed a little. The light
of the sunset was losing its brilliance as hers grew splendid.
The sound of two shots came sharply to us. A minute or so after
No. 2's mule was galloping wildly past us through rocks and
ruins. A native trooper rushed for it, but missed its bridle.
Soon after that Trooper No. 2 galloped up on his feet. I should
judge from the pace he showed that he was a real sprinter. I had
noted him before as a trim little man and ruddy, and a sort of
personification of self-respect. Now he was blue and demoralized.
'Have you caught my mule?' he panted anxiously.
'Have you stopped our man?' Trooper No. 1 asked him coldly, his
face set very hard.
'There's a lion in the way,' gasped Trooper No. 2, quoting
Scripture, whether he knew it or not. 'I got off my mule, I fired
two shots. Then my mule bolted.'
'And you bolted,' said No. 1 with a sneer. He took no further
notice of him, but called the Black Watch corporal and gave him
his orders. 'Take three men,' he said. 'Get to the drift. Run for
your lives. Leave the path and go through the bush if there's
really a lion.' The four Black Watch were off almost as soon as
he had spoken.
Trooper No. 2 began to explain matters at length to his senior.
But the latter did not suffer him at all gladly. Then it was that
I started down the drift road, asking No. 2's boy if he would
show me the place where they had seen the lion. I asked him if he
thought it was wounded. He answered me disdainfully. He showed me
how Trooper No. 2 shot the panic way the way to heaven.
Then we came in sight of the lion standing, haloed by the disc of
the moon. As I have told you, I tried to give No. 2 a chance to
wipe out his stain. I went back to fetch him; he was taking
things hardly, doubtless, and I ought to try and do him a good
turn. He came, but the lion did not stand still to await him. Why
was I so glad he escaped? I don't think it was only because I was
afraid. Yet glad I was. So we gave him up, and tramped back to
the kraal.
Soon after we were back one of the pursuers returned. He had seen
Carrot splash through the drift. He took his time and went at it
leisurely, I gathered, with his piccanin astride upon his
shoulders. On the other side a crowd of natives had received him
in triumph. They jeered at the police and shook their spears and
knobkerries. Carrot was safely across the border and among his
friends.
'It's a lost trip,' said No. 1, and looked No. 2 up and down, as
we sat by the camp fire. No. 2 looked injured and ashamed at one
and the same time. He was not a hero on principle, I should
think, and he had not risen to this occasion. Some people seem to
hold that Britishers are heroes on principle all along our
frontiers, and rise to all occasions. I can testify that this
is not the truth, for I know my own deficiencies. As to No. 2,
there is some sort of mitigating explanation of his conduct to
be yet recounted. But no, even when I have allowed for this,
I am not disposed to write him down heroically efficient or
journalistically British not on that night at least. Just as
a Colenso now and then slips into our big campaigns, so the
monotony of our frontier triumphs gets diversified, I fear, and
not so very seldom. No. 2. is by no means the only man of the
diversifying type I seem to have met. I refuse to admire No. 2 as
he was that night, though I would excuse him.
For the hero of that night, let us look away from him. What a
splendid night it was in the late autumn in the very end of May!
Stars seemed to fall in profusion. But the steady ranks that were
left showed no thinning to my dazzled eyes. I had much time to
watch them, I remember.
Ours was a gloomy camp among the ruins under the stars. One
trooper was convalescent and irritable as well as disappointed.
The other was shaken and sulky with little to say. There were
great pauses in the talk. I thought how I congratulated Carrot,
the cheerful and irresponsible, on his escape. Assuredly his
would-be captors would have seemed to him dull dogs. Of course he
would have thoroughly deserved ordinary boredom. But theirs was
like a London fog. So it fell about that I had much time to give
heed to the Black Watch as they chattered over their fire hard
by. One was telling tales of lions, tales where the terror was
glamorous and ghostly. A hint of a surmise floated to me. It
recalled a type of mediaeval tale that had once entranced me. But
I said nothing to those young white men beside me whose frowning
faces were a study, and a pitiful one. I was intensely sorry for
them both. I just smoked my pipe, and made ready to go to bed
betimes. I was soon asleep, to dream of holy water and silver
bullets and to wake and rise as the cock was crowing (for the
second cock-crow I suppose) away down the hillside; I said an
added prayer of eager devotion, feeling myself to be a postulant
in great need of its answer. I made for the rock of vantage. I
found the lion's spoor in the growing light, and followed it
slowly and timorously into the bush and beyond. There had been a
shower yesterday about noon, and it was easy enough to follow it.
It led down and then up again. I guessed it might be leading me
to Carrot's huts and the troopers once more. But, no, it dipped
far down to that other group of huts wedged amongst the rocks,
where Carrot's boon comrades lived, where I had bandaged the hurt
head, where I had heard but just now the cock crowing. Two huts I
could see to be empty. It did not lead to either of these. It led
straight to the other wherein the embers of a fire shone red.
There was no lion within. I looked for the spoor of the lion's
exit. There was none.
The retainer who had had his head broken by Carrot lay curled in
his blanket by the fire. He was sleeping an exhausted man's
sleep. It was hard work waking him. At last he sat up, a squat
patriarch with grizzled bushy beard and shrewd watchful eyes. He
was huddled in a queer parti-colored blanket purple and brown and
orange and grey. I tried to testify to him with zeal against
blackness of witchcraft. I told him with zest of the Light. He
looked blank enough. Afterwards I spoke of Carrot's escape. His
eyes underwent a change as I watched. The Light which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world, showed in them, as it
seemed to me. He was genuinely glad that his baas was out of the
wood. So clear an affection for the man whose mark he was wearing
touched me. I half emptied my tobacco bag into his hand ere I
said Good-bye in the roaring south-easter, under the saffron
streamered dawn.
I surmised that Carrot owed his escape largely to a real hero
ready to face fire at need, whom we white men had not recognized.
A new feeling of pity for Trooper No. 2 took me. Haply he had
miscalculated things as he pursued his unsanctified way. Haply he
a modern, had been handicapped from his lack of equipment, lack
of such discarded kit as I had dreamed about. Quite conceivably
he had wrestled last night, not only against flesh and blood, but
against principalities and powers unknown.