We reached the Crocodile River drift on a Sunday morning, after a
particularly dry and dusty night trek. `Wanting a wash' did not on such
occasions mean a mild inclination for a luxury: it meant that washing
was badly needed. The dust lay inches deep on the one worn veld road,
and the long strings of oxen toiling along kicked up suffocating clouds
of fine dust which there was seldom any breeze to carry off: it powdered
white man and black to an equal level of yellowy red. The waggons were
a couple of hundred yards from the river; and, taking a complete change,
I went off for a real clean up.
We generally managed to get in a couple of bathes at the rivers--real
swims--but that was only done in the regular drifts and when there were
people about or waggons crossing. In such conditions crocodiles rarely
appeared; they prefer solitude and silence. The swims were very
delightful but somewhat different from ordinary bathes; however remote
may have been the risk of meeting a crocodile when you dived, or of
being grabbed by one as you swam, the idea was always there and made it
more interesting.
Being alone that day I had no intention of having a swim or of going
into the open river, and I took a little trouble to pick a suitable pool
with a rock on which to stand and dress. The water was clear and I
could see the bottom of the pool. It was quite shallow--three feet deep
at most--made by a scour in the sandy bed and divided from the main
stream by a narrow spit of sand a couple of yards wide and twenty long.
At the top end of the sand spit was a flat rock--my dressing table.
After a dip in the pool I stood on to the sand spit to scrub off the
brown dust, keeping one unsoaped eye roving round for intrusive
crocodiles, and the loaded rifle lying beside me. The brutes slide out
so silently and unexpectedly that in that exposed position, with water
all round, one could not afford to turn one's back on any quarter for
long. There is something laughable--it seemed faintly humorous even
then--in the idea of a naked man hastily washing soap out of his eyes
and squeezing away the water to take a hurried look behind him, and then
after careful survey, doing an `altogether' dowse just as hastily--
blowing and spluttering all the time like a boy after his first dive.
The bath was successful and ended without incident--not a sign of a
crocodile the whole time! Breakfast was ready when I reached the
waggons, and feeling very fit and clean in a fresh flannel shirt and
white moleskins, I sat down to it. Jim Makokel' brought the kettle of
coffee from the fire and was in the act of pouring some into a big mug
when he stopped with a grunt of surprise and, looking towards the river,
called out sharply, "What is it?"
One of the herd boys was coming at a trot towards us, and the drivers,
thinking something had happened to the oxen, called a question to him.
He did not answer until he reached them and even then spoke in so quiet
a tone that I could not catch what he said. But Jim, putting down the
kettle, ran to his waggon and grabbing his sticks and assegais called to
me in a husky shouting whisper--which imperfectly describes Jim's way of
relieving his feelings, without making the whole world echo: "Ingwenye,
Inkos! Ingwenye Umkulu! Big Clocodile! Groot Krokodil, Baas!"
Then abandoning his excited polyglot he gabbled off in pure Zulu and at
incredible speed a long account of the big Crocodile: it had carried off
four boys going to the goldfields that year; it had taken a woman and a
baby from the kraal near by, but a white man had beaten it off with a
bucket; it had taken all the dogs, and even calves and goats, at the
drinking-place; and goodness knows how much more. How Jim got his news,
and when he made his friends, were puzzles never solved.
Hunting stories, like travellers tales, are proverbially dangerous to
reputations, however literally true they may be; and this is necessarily
so, partly because only exceptional things are worth telling, and partly
because the conditions of the country or the life referred to are
unfamiliar and cannot be grasped. It is a depressing but accepted fact
that the ideal, lurid--and, I suppose, convincing--pictures of wild life
are done in London, where the author is unhampered by fact or
experience.
"Stick to the impossible, and you will be believed: keep clear of fact
and commonplace, and you cannot be checked."
Such was the cynical advice given many years ago by one who had bought
his experience in childhood and could not forget it. Sent home as a
small boy from a mission station in Zululand to be educated by his
grandparents, he found the demand for marvels among his simple country
relatives so great that his small experience of snakes and wild animals
was soon used up; but the eager suggestive questions of the good people,
old and young, led him on, and he shyly crossed the border. The Fields
of Fancy were fair and free; there were no fences there; and he stepped
out gaily into the Little People's country--The Land of Let's Pretendia!
He became very popular.
One day, however, whilst looking at the cows, he remarked that in
Zululand a cow would not yield her milk unless the calf stood by.
The old farmer stopped in his walk, gave him one suspicious look, and
asked coldly, "What do they do when a calf is killed or dies?"
"They never kill the calves there;" the boy answered, "but once when one
died father stuffed the skin, with grass and showed it to the cow;
because they said that would do."
The old man, red with anger, took the boy to his room, saying that as
long as he spoke of the lions, tigers and snakes that he knew about,
they believed him; but when it came to farming! No! Downright lying he
would not have; and there was nothing for it but larruping.
"It was the only piece of solid truth they had allowed me to tell for
months," he added thoughtfully, "and I got a first-class hiding for it."
And was there no one who doubted Du Chaillu and Stanley and others? Did
no one question Gordon Cumming's story of the herd of elephants caught
and killed in a little kloof? and did not we of Barberton many years
later locate the spot by the enormous pile of bones, and name it
"Elephants' Kloof?"
There are two crocodile incidents well-known to those whom time has now
made old hands, but believed by no one else; even in the day of their
happening they divided men into believers and unbelievers. The one was
of `Mad' Owen--only mad, because utterly reckless--riding through Komati
Drift one moonlight night alone and unarmed, who, riding, found his
horse brought to a stop, plunging, kicking and struggling on the sand
bank in mid-stream where the water was not waist deep. Owen looking
back saw that a crocodile had his horse by the leg. All he had was a
leaded hunting-crop, but, jumping into the water he laid on so
vigorously that the crocodile made off, and Owen remounted and rode out.
There are many who say that it is not true--that it cannot be true; for
no man would do it. But there are others who have an open mind, because
they knew Owen--Mad Owen, who for a wager bandaged his horse's eyes and
galloped him over a twenty foot bank headlong into the Jew's Hole in
Lydenburg; Owen, who when driving four young horses in a Cape cart flung
the reins away and whipped up the team, bellowing with laughter, because
his nervous companion said he had never been upset and did not want to
be; Owen, who--But too many things rise up that earned him his title and
blow the `impossible' to the winds.
Mad Owen deserves a book to himself; but here is my little testimony on
his behalf, given shamefaced at the thought of how he would roar to
think it needed.
I crossed that same drift one evening and on riding up the bank to
Furley's store saw a horse standing in a dejected attitude with one hind
leg clothed in `trowsers' made of sacking and held up by a suspender
ingeniously fastened across his back.
During the evening something reminded me of the horse, and I asked a
question; and the end of Furley's answer was, "They say it's all a yarn
about `horsewhipping' a crocodile: all we know is that one night, a week
ago, he turned up here dripping wet, and after having a drink told us
the yarn. He had the leaded hunting-crop in his hand; and that's the
horse he was riding. You can make what you like of it. We've been
doctoring the horse ever since, but I doubt if it will pull through!"
I have no doubt about the incident. Owen did not invent: he had no need
to; and Furley himself was no mean judge of crocodiles and men. Furley
kept a ferry boat for the use of natives and others when the river was
up, at half a crown a trip. The business ran itself and went strong
during the summer floods, but in winter when the river was low and
fordable it needed pushing; and then Furley's boatman, an intelligent
native, would loiter about the drift and interest travellers in his
crocodile stories, and if they proved over-confident or sceptical, would
manoeuvre them a little way down stream where, from the bank, they would
usually see a big crocodile sunning himself on a sand spit below the
drift. The boys always took the boat. One day some police entered the
store and joyously announced that they had got him--"bagged the old
villain at last!"; and Furley dropped on a sack of mealies groaning out
"Glory, Boys! The ferry's ruined. Why, I've preserved him for years!"
The other crocodile incident concerns "Lying Tom"--brave merry-faced
blue-eyed Tom; bubbling with good humour; overflowing with kindness; and
full of the wildest yarns, always good and amusing, but so steep that
they made the most case-hardened draw a long breath.
The name Lying Tom was understood and accepted by every one in the
place, barring Tom himself; for, oddly enough, there was another Tom of
the same surname, but no relation, and once when his name cropped up I
heard the real Simon Pure refer to him as "my namesake--the chap they
call Lying Tom." To the day of his death Tom believed that it was the
other Tom who was esteemed the liar.
Tom was a prospector who `came in' occasionally for supplies or
licences; and there came a day when Barberton was convulsed by Lying
Tom's latest.
He had been walking along the bank of the Crocodile River, and on
hearing screams ran down just in time to see a kaffir woman with a child
on her back dragged off through the shallow water by a crocodile. Tom
ran in to help--"I kicked the dashed thing on the head and in the eyes,"
he said, "and punched its ribs and then grabbed the bucket that the
woman had in her hand and hammered the blamed thing over the head till
it let go. By Jimminy, Boys, the woman was in a mess: never saw any one
in such a fright!"
Poor Tom suffered from consumption in the throat and talked in husky
jerks broken by coughs and laughter. Is there one among them who knew
him who does not remember the breezy cheeriness, the indomitable pluck,
the merry blue eyes, so limpidly clear, the expressive bushy eyebrows,
and the teeth, too perfect to be wasted on a man, and ever flashing with
his unfailing smiles?
Tom would end up with--"Niggers said I was `takati': asked for some of
my medicine! Blamed got no pluck: would've let the woman go."
Of course this story went the rounds latest and best; but one day we
turned up in Barberton to deliver our loads, and that evening a whisper
went about and men with faces humorously puzzled looked at one another
and said "Lying Tom's a fraud: the crocodile story is true!"
For our party, shooting guinea-fowl in the kaffir lands along the river,
came upon a kraal where there sat a woman with an arm so scarred and
marked that we could not but ask what had caused it. There was no
difference in the stories, except that the kaffirs after saying that the
white man had kicked the crocodile and beaten it with the bucket, added
"and he kicked and beat with the bucket the two men who were there,
saying that they were not men but dogs, who would not go in and help the
woman. But he was bewitched: the crocodile could not touch him!"
Some of Tom's stories were truly incredible, but not those in which he
figured to advantage: he was too brave a man to have consciously gained
credit he did not deserve. He died, slowly starved to death by the
cruel disease--the brave, kindly, cheery spirit, smiling unbeaten to the
end.
That was what Jim referred to when he called me to kill the murderer of
women and children. It pleased him and others to say that this was the
same crocodile; and I believe it was. The locality was the same, and
the kraal boys said that it was in the old place from which all its
murderous raids had been made; and that was all we knew.
I took the rifle and went with the herd boy; Jim followed close behind,
walking on his toes with the waltzy springy movement of an ostrich,
eager to get ahead and repeatedly silenced and driven back by me in the
few hundred yards' walk to the river.
A queer premonitory feeling came over me as I saw we were making
straight for the bathing pool; but before reaching the bank the herd boy
squatted down, indicating that somewhere in front and below us the enemy
would be found. An easy crawl brought me to the river bank and, sure
enough, on the very spot where I had stood to wash, only fifty yards
from us, there was an enormous crocodile. He was lying along the sand
spit with his full length exposed to me. Such a shot would have been a
moral certainty, but as I brought the rifle slowly up it may have
glinted in the sun, or perhaps the crocodile had been watching us all
the time, for with one easy turn and no splash at all he slid into the
river and was gone.
It was very disgusting and I pitched into Jim and the other boys behind
for having made a noise and shown themselves; but they were still
squatting when I reached them and vowed they had neither moved nor
spoken. We had already turned to go when there came a distant call from
beyond the river. To me it was merely a kaffir's voice and a sound
quite meaningless: but to the boys' trained ears it spoke clearly. Jim
pressed me downwards and we all squatted again.
"He is coming out on another sandbank," Jim explained.
Again I crawled to the bank and lay flat, with the rifle ready. There
was another sand streak a hundred yards out in the stream with two
out-croppings of black rock at the upper end of it--they were rocks
right enough, for I had examined them carefully when bathing. This was
the only other sandbank in sight: it was higher than it appeared to be
from a distance and the crocodile whilst hidden from us was visible to
the natives on the opposite bank as it lay in the shallow water and
emerged inch by inch to resume its morning sun bath. The crocodile was
so slow in showing up that I quite thought it had been scared off again,
and I turned to examine other objects and spots up and down the stream;
but presently glancing back at the bank again I saw what appeared to be
a third rock, no bigger than a loaf of bread. This object I watched
until my eyes ached and swam; it was the only possible crocodile; yet it
was so small, so motionless, so permanent looking, it seemed absurd to
doubt that it really was a stone which had passed unnoticed before.
As I watched unblinkingly it seemed to grow bigger and again contract
with regular swing, as if it swelled and shrank with breathing; and
knowing that this must be merely an optical delusion caused by staring
too long, I shut my eyes for a minute. The effect was excellent: the
rock was much bigger; and after that it was easy to lie still and wait
for the cunning old reptile to show himself.
It took half an hour of this cautious manoeuvring and edging on the part
of the crocodile before he was comfortably settled on the sand with the
sun warming all his back. In the meantime the waggon-boys behind me had
not stirred; on the opposite side of the river kaffirs from the
neighbouring kraal had gathered to the number of thirty or forty, men,
women and children, and they stood loosely grouped, instinctively still
silent and watchful, like a little scattered herd of deer. All on both
sides were watching me and waiting for the shot. It seemed useless to
delay longer; the whole length of the body was showing, but it looked so
wanting in thickness, so shallow in fact, that it was evident the
crocodile was lying, not on the top, but on the other slope of the sand
spit; and probably not more than six or eight inches--in depth--of body
was visible.
It was little enough to aim at, and the bullet seemed to strike the top
of the bank first, sending up a column of sand, and then, probably
knocked all out of shape, ploughed into the body with a tremendous
thump.
The crocodile threw a back somersault--that is, it seemed to rear up on
its tail and spring backwards; the jaws divided into a huge fork as, for
a second, it stood up on end; and it let out an enraged roar, seemingly
aimed at the heavens. It was a very sudden and dramatic effect,
following on the long silence.
Then the whole world seemed to burst into indescribable turmoil; shouts
and yells burst out on all sides; the kaffirs rushed down to the banks--
the men armed with sticks and assegais, and the women and children with
nothing more formidable than their voices; the crocodile was alive--very
much alive--and in the water; the waggon-boys, headed by Jim, were all
round me and all yelling out together what should or should not be done,
and what would happen if we did or did not do it. It was Babel and
Bedlam let loose.
With the first plunge the crocodile disappeared, but it came up again
ten yards away thrashing the water into foam and going up stream like a
paddle-boat gone reeling roaring mad--if one can imagine such a thing!
I had another shot at him the instant he reappeared, but one could
neither see nor hear where it struck; and again and again I fired
whenever he showed up for a second. He appeared to be shot through the
lungs; at any rate the kaffirs on the other bank, who were then quite
close enough to see, said that it was so. The waggon-boys had run down
the bank out on to the first sand spit and I followed them, shouting to
the kaffirs opposite to get out of the line of fire, as I could no
longer shoot without risk of hitting them.
The crocodile after his first straight dash up stream had tacked about
in all directions during the next few minutes, disappearing for short
spells and plunging out again in unexpected places. One of these sudden
reappearances brought him once more abreast, and quite near to us, and
Jim with a fierce yell and with his assegai held high in his right hand
dashed into the water, going through the shallows in wild leaps. I
called to him to come back but against his yells and the excited shouts
of the ever-increasing crowd my voice could not live; and Jim, mad with
excitement, went on. Twenty yards out, where increasing depth steadied
him, he turned for a moment and seeing himself alone in the water called
to me with eager confidence, "Come on, Baas."
It had never occurred to me that any one would be such an idiot as to go
into water after a wounded crocodile. There was no need to finish off
this one, for it was bound to die, and no one wanted the meat or skin.
Who, then, would be so mad as to think of such a thing? Five minutes
earlier I would have answered very confidently for myself; but there are
times when one cannot afford to be sensible. There was a world of
unconscious irony in Jim's choice of words "_Come_ on!" and "_Baas_!"
The boy giving the lead to his master was too much for me; and in I
went!
I cannot say that there was much enjoyment in it for the first few
moments--not until the excitement took hold and all else was forgotten.
The first thing that struck me was that in the deep water my rifle was
worth no more than a walking-stick, and not nearly as useful as an
assegai; but what drove this and many other thoughts from my mind in a
second was the appearance of Jock on the stage and his sudden jump into
the leading place.
In the first confusion he had passed unnoticed, probably at my heels as
usual, but the instant I answered Jim's challenge by jumping into the
water he gave one whimpering yelp of excitement and plunged in too; and
in a few seconds he had outdistanced us all and was leading straight for
the crocodile. I shouted to him, of course in vain--he heard nothing;
and Jim and I plunged and struggled along to head the dog off.
As the crocodile came up Jock went straight for him--his eyes gleaming,
his shoulders up, his nose out, his neck stretched to the utmost in his
eagerness--and he ploughed along straining every muscle to catch up.
When the crocodile went under he slackened and looked anxiously about,
but each fresh rise was greeted by the whimpering yelps of intense
suppressed excitement as he fairly hoisted himself out of the water with
the vigour of his swimming.
The water was now breast-high for us, and we were far out in the stream,
beyond the sand spit where the crocodile had lain, when the kaffirs on
the bank got their first chance and a flight of assegais went at the
enemy as he rose. Several struck and two remained in him; he rose again
a few yards from Jim, and that sportsman let fly one that struck well
home. Jock, who had been toiling close behind for some time and gaining
slowly, was not five yards off then; the floundering and lashing of the
crocodile were bewildering, but on he went as grimly and eagerly as
ever. I fired again--not more than eight yards away--but the water was
then up to my arms, and it was impossible to pick a vital part; the
brain and neck were the only spots to finish him, but one could see
nothing beyond a great upheaval of water and clouds of spray and
blood-stained foam.
The crocodile turned from the shot and dived up stream, heading straight
for Jock: the din of yelling voices stopped instantly as the huge
open-mouthed thing plunged towards the dog; and for one sick horrified
moment I stood and watched--helpless.
Had the crocodile risen in front of Jock that would have been the end--
one snap would have done it; but it passed clear underneath, and, coming
up just beyond him, the great lashing tail sent the dog up with the
column of water a couple of feet in the air. He did as he had done when
the koodoo bull tossed him: his head was round straining to get at the
crocodile before he was able to turn his body in the water; and the
silence was broken by a yell of wild delight and approval from the bank.
Before us the water was too deep and the stream too strong to stand in;
Jim in his eagerness had gone in shoulder high, and my rifle when aimed
only just cleared the water. The crocodile was the mark for more
assegais from the bank as it charged up stream again, with Jock tailing
behind, and it was then easy enough to follow its movements by the
shafts that were never all submerged. The struggles became perceptibly
weaker, and as it turned again to go with the stream every effort was
concentrated on killing and landing it before it reached the rocks and
rapids.
I moved back for higher ground and, finding that the bed shelved up
rapidly down stream, made for a position where there would be enough
elevation to put in a brain shot. The water was not more than waist
high then, and as the crocodile came rolling and thrashing down I waited
for his head to show up clearly. My right foot touched a sloping rock
which rose almost to the surface of the water close above the rapids,
and anxious to get the best possible position for a last shot, I took my
stand there. The rock was the ordinary shelving bedrock, uptilted at an
easy angle and cut off sheer on the exposed side, and the wave in the
current would have shown this to any one not wholly occupied with other
things; but I had eyes for nothing except the crocodile which was then
less than a dozen yards off, and in my anxiety to secure a firm footing
for the shot I moved the right foot again a few inches--over the edge of
the rock. The result was as complete a spill as if one unthinkingly
stepped backwards off a diving board: I disappeared in deep water, with
the knowledge that the crocodile would join me there in a few seconds.
One never knows how these things are done or how long they take: I was
back on the rock--without the rifle--and had the water out of my eyes in
time to see the crocodile roll helplessly by, six feet away, with Jock
behind making excited but ridiculously futile attempts to get hold of
the tail; Jim--swimming, plunging and blowing like a maddened hippo--
formed the tail of the procession, which was headed by my water-logged
hat floating heavily a yard or so in front of the crocodile.
While a crowd of yelling niggers under the generalship of Jim were
landing the crocodile, I had time to do some diving, and managed to fish
out my rifle.
My Sunday change was wasted. But we got the old crocodile; and that was
something, after all.