SURPRISED--A WOMAN HUNTING ELEPHANTS--JACK'S HIPPOPOTAMUS.
Following my shot, with an interval of not more than two seconds,
came the sound of another rifle, three or four hundred yards away.
Then several elephants--I cannot say whether there were two or three,
or twice that number--crashed away through the forest in different
directions, and simultaneously with the crashing I heard the sound of
other shots in the same direction as the first one.
"Surely Harry and Jack can't have turned back and got here as quickly
as this?" I said to myself. "That must be some other hunter; but I
don't know of any one in this neighborhood."
I shouted and blew my whistle, but received no audible response,
except the firing of a rifle, which seemed to be discharged directly
toward the sky. Then I went in the direction of the shot,
occasionally blowing my whistle to indicate my whereabouts. Of
course Mirogo and Kalil accompanied me.
When we had gone about three hundred yards we met a native tracker
who was unknown to me, and also to both my servants. He had a few
words with Mirogo, and it was evident that they understood each
other. Mirogo turned to me and said there was another hunter who had
shot an elephant, and was back in the forest a short distance.
"Very well," I said to Mirogo; "show me where he is and I'll make his
acquaintance."
"He isn't a man," said Mirogo; "he's a woman!"
"What!" I exclaimed, "a woman hunting elephants?"
"That's what his tracker say," replied Mirogo; "his tracker say he's
woman."
Well, here was romance with a vengeance: a woman shooting elephants
in Africa, and we three men had not heard of her presence in the
neighborhood! All the more reason why I should become acquainted
with our rival. We certainly did not want to be in each other's way,
and, moreover, if she was from any civilized land it would be a
satisfaction to see and talk with her. The female society that one
encounters in an African hunting-expedition is not usually of a kind
to be enamoured of, as it consists almost entirely of native negroes,
whose accomplishments in literature and the arts are not very marked.
Furthermore, their style of beauty and habits of life do not render
them at all attractive.
It did not occur to me that however much I might desire to make the
acquaintance of this amazon she might not care for mine; but that is
a good deal like a man, anyhow. The majority of the male sex always
seem to think that their society is in demand, and you cannot make
them understand that their room is sometimes better than their
company.
So I followed Mirogo, who was following the strange tracker, and in a
very few minutes I stood with my hat off in presence of the fair one,
the sound of whose rifle had attracted my attention.
I bowed and smiled, and apologized for the intrusion, adding that I
was quite unaware that any party but my own was in that region.
"Don't understand me as objecting to your presence," I added, "as
there is abundance of game for ten times the number of hunters that
are likely to assemble in this neighborhood."
"Quite natural," said the stranger, "that you were not aware of our
being in this vicinity, as we only arrived here last evening. We
heard of a party of hunters who had come in from the southeast; we
came in here from the southwest, from Walvisch Bay, and only encamped
at sunset yesterday. This morning I heard of elephants in this
forest, and came out in the hope of shooting one."
"And evidently you have succeeded," I replied, pointing in the
direction of the fallen beast that lay a short distance away. "Allow
me to extend my congratulations."
She accepted the compliment, and said it was not her first elephant
by any means. "We have been out several weeks," she continued, "and
have been hunting whenever the opportunity offered."
"One does not carry a card-case in his pocket on an elephant-hunt," I
remarked, "so please allow me to introduce myself verbally. I am
Frank Manson, at your service, and belong to a hunting-party that
came out from Durban and has been working up in this direction. We
are encamped about two miles east of here."
The fair huntress bowed slightly in acknowledgment, and then said: "I
am Miss Boland, and am with my friend, Mrs. Roberts. We are both
English, and are independent enough to travel by ourselves. The only
men in our party are the native assistants, the fore-looper,
after-rider, and manager; the latter is a Dutchman who has general
charge of the wagons and outfit, subject to our orders."
I thanked her for the information, and asked if I or my friends could
be of any assistance to her. It is so like a man to think that a
woman always wants assistance that the suggestion came from me as
naturally as does the phrase "Good-morning" whenever I meet a friend
at the beginning of the day.
She smiled, saying as she did so, with an air of independence:
"Thank you, sir, but I do not know that we need any assistance
whatever; you are very kind to tender it, but really we manage to get
along very comfortably. Should I think of anything in which you can
aid us I will not hesitate to send word to your camp. Do you remain
long in this neighborhood?"
"As to that I cannot say positively," I replied; "we have formed no
very definite plans. Shall stay where we are as long as the hunting
is good, and when it falls off we'll go elsewhere. I presume that is
very much the case with yourselves?"
"Yes," she replied; "we stay in a place as long as we like it, and
then move on."
With that she bowed, as if to intimate that I had better be moving on
in my own direction. I took the hint and bade her good-day, with the
suggestion that I had been greatly pleased at meeting her; and she
amiably returned the suggestion almost word for word. I went back in
the direction of my fallen elephant, and she turned the other way in
the forest.
The reader will naturally want to know how this amazon of the African
woods was dressed.
Her costume was decidedly mannish, and less unlike mine than might at
first be supposed. She wore loose, baggy trousers that were thrust
into hunting-boots, thus enabling her to get around the forest far
easier than if she had been encumbered with any kind of skirts, even
short ones. The upper part of her figure was clad in a tunic that
was buttoned from the neck down the whole length of the front, and
terminated just at the knee, not below it. The tunic was evidently
made for hunting-purposes, as it abounded in pockets and had a
cartridge-case firmly sewed to it. On her head she wore a sola
topee, or sun-helmet, and in general her dress was not at all unlike
that of a man. While we were conversing she stood behind a fallen
log, so that I could not take in the entire outline of her figure.
Her manner was pleasing enough, and altogether I felt myself a little
touched in the region of the heart. Her independence had piqued me
somewhat, and I felt that I wanted to see her again, but exactly how
to go about it I did not know. She had not invited me to visit their
camp or indicated the slightest desire that any one of our party
should come near her or her friend. While she had not said they
wished to be left alone, she certainly did not say that she wanted
any of our company.
I got back to where my fallen elephant lay, and then sent Mirogo to
camp to bring men and an ax for cutting out the animal's tusks. I
told him to be particular and not make any mistake, as the men might
stumble on the carcass of the elephant which Miss Boland had killed.
I remarked that it would be very discourteous to take the tusks of
her elephant instead of ours, and, furthermore, that ours were much
larger than hers.
Then, accompanied by Kalil, I made my way back to camp, reaching
there an hour or more before Harry and Jack returned from their
unprofitable wait at the edge of the forest. We took lunch, and then
went down the river to shoot hippopotami. We met with fairly good
luck, as we killed three or four of the big brutes, though we secured
only one, the others sinking out of our reach in the river. It is
proper to say that I had no actual part in the affair, as I turned
away before reaching the river to stalk a gemsbok.
"We made a good-sized raft of reeds," said Harry--"one that would
hold both of us and a couple of men to paddle the craft. In this
raft we floated out into the river and down a half-mile or so, where
it expands into a narrow lake. When we started we couldn't see a
hippo, not one, as they'd all taken the alarm at the noise we made
building and launching the raft. By the time we got down to the
broad portion of the river we were beyond the point of disturbance,
and then we saw their snouts sticking out of the water in various
directions. The proper thing to do is to shoot the hippo in shallow
water, and then throw a harpoon into him just as quickly as you can.
If you can manage to kill him instantly with your first shot, and the
water is not too deep, you can get him and drag him ashore; but
unless your first shot is instantly fatal he gets away.
"And that was the case with us," Harry continued; "there was only one
that we got fine work into, and that we did with an explosive bullet.
Jack was the lucky fellow. He put the bullet straight into the
hippo's ear, and that, you know, is the best shot to make. It didn't
explode until it got well into his head, and I don't believe there
was ever a more astonished creature in the river than that beast was
when the explosion came. He went to the bottom like a shot; that is,
he went down about four feet. We had a harpoon along, one of the
regular style that the natives hunt with, and we prodded that into
the fellow just as soon as we could. Then we paddled the raft off to
the shore, and dragged him along by means of the harpoon-line."
"And you've got him all right, have you?" I said.
"Oh yes," replied Harry, "he's secure; but the others are at the
bottom of the river. The men will be along in a little while with
the skin of the beast, and we'll have all the jambok we want in the
camp."
I should explain that the jambok is a whip made of hippopotamus-hide,
just like the koorbash in Egypt. It is the most cruel whip ever
made; the nearest approach to it known in the civilized world is the
green hide, or rawhide, such as was formerly used in the Southern
States in the days of slavery, and occasionally by New England
schoolmasters of the olden time on very unruly pupils.
Our native attendants had a royal feast off the flesh of the
hippopotamus, and we came in for a share of it, or as much as we
wanted. Hippo is very good eating when you cannot get anything
better; it has a strong, rather musky flavor which I do not like, and
I find that most other white men have tastes similar to mine in this
respect. But a Kafir, or any other black-skinned native of Africa,
is not at all particular, and you might empty a bottleful of musk
over his dinner without interfering with his appetite.
I did not say a word to Harry and Jack until dinner about the hunter
I met in the forest. I told them briefly about my elephant-hunt, but
we all were too busy for anything else until we got seated at the
table; fact is, we were pretty busy then, as all were hungry, but
there are intervals at table when even a very hungry man can put in a
few words now and then between the mouthfuls.
"By the way, fellows, I didn't tell you about the new hunting-party
here, did I?" I remarked, soon after we had taken our seats.
"No!" said both the others, in a breath; "who are they?"
"I don't know their whole pedigree," I replied. "I have only seen
one of them."
"Well, what can you tell us about him?" said Harry. "Who is he?
Where is he from? What kind of an outfit has he?"
"There are several questions all in one," I answered, "and some of
them I haven't yet learned about. In the first place, it isn't a
'him' at all; it's a 'her'!"