THE ISLAND OF MOMBASA, WITH THE JUNGLES OF EQUATORIAL AFRICA "ONLY A FEW
BLOCKS AWAY." A STORY OF THE WORLD'S CHAMPION MAN-EATING LIONS
In this voyage of the _Woermann_ there were about twenty Englishmen and
thirty Germans in the first class, not including women, and children.
There was practically no communication between the two nationalities,
which seemed deeply significant in these days when there is so much talk
of war between England and Germany. Each went his way without so much as
a "good morning" or a _guten abend_. And it was not a case of
unfamiliarity with the languages, either, that caused this mutual
restraint, for most of the Germans speak English. It was simply an
evidence that at the present time there is decidedly bad feeling between
the two races, and if it is a correct barometer of conditions in Europe,
there is certain to be war one of these days. On the _Woermann_, we only
hoped that it would not break out while the weather was as hot as it was
at that time.
The Germans are not addicted to deck sports while voyaging about, and it
is quite unusual to find on German ships anything in the way of deck
competition. The German, while resting, prefers to play cards, or sing,
or sit in his long easy chair with the children playing about. The
Englishman likes to compete in feats of strength and takes to deck
sports as a duck takes to water. I don't know who started it, but some
one organized deck sports on the _Woermann_, and after we left Aden the
sound of battle raged without cessation. Some of the competitions were
amusing. For instance, there was the cockfight. Two men, with hands and
knees hobbled with a stick and stout rope, seat themselves inside a
circle, and the game is for each one to try to put the other outside the
circle. Neither can use his hands.
[Drawing: _The Cock Fight_]
It is like wrestling in a sitting position with both hands tied, the
mode of attack being to topple over one's opponent and then bunt him out
of the circle. There is considerable skill in the game and a fearful lot
of hard work. By the time the victor has won, the seat of the trousers
of each of the two contending heroes has cleaned the deck until it
shines--the deck, not the trousers.
In a similar way the deck is benefited by the "are you there" game. Two
men are blindfolded, armed with long paper clubs, and then lie at full
length on the deck, with left hands clasped. One then says, "Are you
there?" and when the other answers, "I am," he makes a wild swat at
where he thinks the other's head to be. Of course, when the man says "I
am," he immediately gets his head as far away from where it was when he
spoke as is possible while clasping his opponent's hand. The "Are you
there" man makes a wild swing and lands some place with a prodigious
thump. He usually strikes the deck and seldom hits the head of the other
man. If one of them hits the other's head three times he wins. In the
meantime the deck has been thoroughly massaged by the two recumbent
heroes as they have moved back and forth in their various offensive and
defensive manoeuvers.
[Drawing: "_Are You There?_"]
[Photograph: By courtesy of W.D. Boyce. A Study in Mombasa Shadows]
[Photograph: By courtesy of W.D. Boyce. Mombasa Is a Pretty Place]
[Photograph: Transportation in Mombasa]
[Drawing: _The Spar and Pillow Fight_]
The pillow fight on the spar is the most fun. Two gladiators armed with
pillows sit astride a spar and try to knock each other off. It requires
a good deal of knack to keep your balance while some one is pounding you
with a large pillow. You are not allowed to touch the spar with your
hands, hence the difficulty of holding a difficult position. When a man
begins to waver the other redoubles his attack, and slowly at first, but
surely, the defeated gladiator tumbles off the spar into a canvas
stretched several feet below. It is lots of fun, especially for the
spectator and the winner.
Then, of course, there were other feats of intellectual and physical
prowess in the _Woermann_ competition, such as threading the needle,
where you run across the deck, thread a needle held by a woman, and then
drag her back to the starting point. The woman usually, in the
excitement of the last spirited rush, falls over and is bodily dragged
several yards, squealing wildly and waving a couple of much agitated
deck shoes, and so forth.
Similar to this contest is the one where the gentleman dashes across the
deck with several other equally dashing gentlemen, kneels at the feet of
a woman who ties his necktie and then lights his cigarette. The game is
to see who can do this the quickest and get back to the starting place
first. If you have ever tried to light a cigarette in a terrible hurry
and on a windy deck, you will appreciate the elements of uncertainty in
the game.
These deck sports served to amuse and divert during the six days on the
Indian Ocean, and then the ship's chart said that we were almost at
Mombasa. The theoretical stage of the lion hunt was nearly over and it
was now a matter of only a few days until we should be up against the
"real thing." I sometimes wondered how I should act with a hostile lion
in front of me--whether I would become panic-stricken or whether my
nerve would hold true. There is lots of food for reverie when one is
going against big game for the first time.
[Drawing: _Chalking the Pig's Eye_]
We landed at Mombasa September sixteenth, seventeen days out from
Naples.
Mombasa is a little island about two by three miles in extent. It is
riotous with brilliant vegetation, and, as seen after a long sea voyage
through the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, it looks heavenly except for
the heat. Hundreds of great baobab trees with huge, bottle-like trunks
and hundreds of broad spreading mango trees give an effect of tropical
luxuriance that is hardly to be excelled in beauty anywhere in the East.
Large ships that stop at the island usually wind their course through a
narrow channel and land their passengers and freight at the dock at
Kilindini, a mile and a half from the old Portuguese town of Mombasa,
where all the life of the island is centered. There are many relics of
the old days around the town of Mombasa and the port of Kilindini, but
since the British have been in possession a brisk air of progress and
enterprise is evident everywhere. Young men and young women in tennis
flannels, and other typical symptoms of British occupation are
constantly seen, and one entirely forgets that one is several thousand
miles from home and only a few blocks from the jungles of equatorial
Africa. We dreaded Mombasa before we arrived, but were soon agreeably
disappointed to find it not only beautiful and interesting, but also
pleasantly cool and full of most hospitable social life.
When our ship anchored off Kilindini there was a great crowd assembled
on the pier. There were many smart looking boats, manned with uniformed
natives, that at once came out to the ship, and we knew that the town
was _en fête_ to welcome the newly appointed governor, Sir Percy
Girouard.
He and his staff landed in full uniform. There were addresses of welcome
at the pier, a great deal of cheering and considerable photographing.
Then the rest of the passengers went ashore and spent several hours at
the custom house. All personal luggage was passed through, and we
embarked on a little train for Mombasa. The next day we registered our
firearms and had Smith, Mackenzie and Company do the rest. This firm is
ubiquitous in Mombasa and Zanzibar. They attend to everything for you,
and relieve you from much worry, vexation and rupees. They pay your
customs duties, get your mountains of stuff on the train for Nairobi,
and all you have to do is to pay them a commission and look pleasant.
The customs duty is ten per cent. on everything you have, and the
commission is five per cent. But in a hot climate, where one is apt to
feel lazy, the price is cheap.
Thanks to the governor, our party of four was invited to go to Nairobi
on his special train. It left Mombasa on the morning of the nineteenth
of September, and at once began to climb toward the plateau on which
Nairobi is situated, three hundred and twenty-seven miles away. We had
dreaded the railway ride through the lowlands along the coast, for that
district has a bad reputation for fever and all such ills. But again we
were pleasantly disappointed. The country was beautiful and interesting,
and at four o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at Voi, a spot that is
synonymous with human ailments. It is one of the famous ill health
resorts of Africa, but on this occasion it was on its good behavior. We
stopped four hours, inspected everything in sight, and at eight o'clock
the special began to climb toward the plateau of East Africa. At nine
o'clock we stopped at Tsavo, a place made famous by the two man-eating
lions whose terrible depredations have been so vividly described by
Colonel Patterson in his book, _The Man Eaters of Tsavo_. These two
lions absolutely stopped all work on the railroad for a period of
several weeks. They were daring beyond belief, and seemed to have no
fear of human beings. For a time all efforts to kill them were in vain.
Twenty-eight native workmen were eaten by them, and doubtless many more
were unrecorded victims of their activity. The whole country was
terrorized until finally, after many futile attempts, they were at last
killed.
No book on Africa seems complete unless this incident is mentioned
somewhere within its pages.
We looked out at Tsavo with devouring interest. All was still, with the
dead silence of a tropical night. Then the train steamed on and we had
several hours in a berth to think the matter over. In the early hours of
morning, we stopped at Simba, the "Place of Lions," where the
station-master has many lion scares even now. In the cold darkness of
the night we bundled up in thick clothes and went forward to sit on the
observation seat of the engine. Slowly the eastern skies became gray,
then pink, and finally day broke through heavy masses of clouds. It was
intensely cold. In the faint light we could see shadowy figures of
animals creeping home after their night's hunting. A huge cheetah
bounded along the track in front of us. A troop of giraffes slowly
ambled away from the track. A gaunt hyena loped off into the scrub near
the side of the railroad and then, as daylight became brighter, we found
ourselves in the midst of thousands of wild animals. Zebras,
hartebeests, Grant's gazelles, Thompson's gazelles, impalla, giraffes,
wildebeests, and many other antelope species cantered off and stood to
watch the train as it swept past them. It was a wonderful ride, perhaps
the most novel railway ride to be found any place in the world. On each
side of the Uganda Railroad there is a strip of land, narrow on the
north and wide on the south, in which game is protected from the
sportsman, and consequently the animals have learned to regard these
strips as sanctuary. There were many tales of lions as we rode along,
and the imagination pictured a slinking lion in every patch of reeds
along the way. I heard one lion story that makes the man-eaters of Tsavo
seem like vegetarians. It was told to me by a gentleman high in the
government service--a man of unimpeachable veracity. He says the story
is absolutely true, but refused to swear to it.
Once upon a time, so the story goes, there was a caravan of slaves
moving through the jungles of Africa. The slave-drivers were cruel and
they chained the poor savages together in bunches of ten. Each slave
wore an iron ring around his neck and the chain passed through this ring
and on to the rest of the ten. For days and weeks and months they
marched along, their chains clanking and their shoulders bending beneath
the heavy weight. From time to time the slave-drivers would jog them
along with a few lashes from a four-cornered "hippo" hide _kiboko_, or
whip. Quite naturally the life was far from pleasant to the chain-gang
and they watched eagerly for a chance to escape. Finally one dark night,
when the sentinels were asleep, a bunch of ten succeeded in creeping
away into the darkness. They were unarmed and chained from neck to neck,
one to another. For several days they made their way steadily toward the
coast. All seemed well. They ate fruit and nuts and herbs and began to
see visions of a pleasant arrival at the coast.
[Drawing: _They Made Their Way Steadily Toward the Coast_]
But, alas! Their hopes were soon to be dispelled. One night a deep
rumbling roar was heard in the jungle through which they were picking
their unanimous way. A shudder ran through the slaves. "_Simba_," they
whispered in terror. A little while later there was another rumble, this
time much closer. They speedily became more frightened. Here they were,
ten days' march from the coast, unarmed, and quite defenseless against a
lion.
Presently the lion appeared, his cruel, hungry eyes gleaming through the
night. They were frozen with horror, as slowly, slowly, slowly the great
animal crept toward them with his tail sibilantly lashing above his
back. They were now thoroughly alarmed and realized to the utmost that
the lion's intentions were open to grave suspicion. Breathlessly they
waited, or perhaps they tried to climb trees, but being chained together
they could not climb more than one tree. And there was not a single tree
big enough to hold more than nine of them. The record of the story is
now obscure, but the horrid tale goes on to relate that the lion gave a
frightful roar and leaped upon the tenth man, biting him to death in a
single snap. The dilemma of the others is obvious. They knew better than
to disturb a lion while it is eating. To do so would be to court sudden
death. So they sat still and watched the beast slowly and greedily
devour their comrade. Having finished his meal the great beast,
surfeited with food, slowly moved off into the jungle.
[Drawing: _The Lion's Intentions Were Open to Grave Suspicions_]
Immediately the nine remaining slaves took to their heels, dragging the
empty ring and chain of the late number ten. All night long they ran
until finally they became exhausted and fell asleep. In the afternoon
they again resumed their march, hopeful once more. But alas! again.
Along about supper-time they heard the distant roar of a lion. Presently
it sounded nearer and soon the gleaming eyes of the lion appeared once
more among the jungle grass. Once again they were frozen with horror as
the hungry beast devoured the last man in the row--number nine. Again
they sat helpless while the man-eater slowly finished his supper, and
again they were overjoyed to see him depart from their midst. As soon as
the last vestige of his tail had disappeared from view they scrambled up
and hiked briskly toward the coast, nine days away.
[Drawing: _While the Man-Eater Finished His Supper_]
They were now thoroughly alarmed, and almost dreaded the supper hour.
The next night the lion caught up with them again and proceeded to
devour number eight. He then peacefully ambled away, leaving another
empty ring.
The next night there was a spirited contest to see which end of the
chain should be last, but a vote was taken and it was decided six to one
in favor of continuing in their original formation. The one who voted
against was eaten that night and the remaining six, with the four empty
rings clanking behind them, resumed their mournful march to the coast,
six days away.
[Drawing: _Two to One_]
For five nights after this, the lion caught up with them and diminished
their number by five. Finally there was only one left and the coast was
a full day's march away. Could he make it? It looked like a desperate
chance, but he still had hopes. He noticed with pleasure that the lion
was becoming fat and probably could not travel fast. But he also noticed
with displeasure that he had forty feet of chain and nine heavy iron
neck rings to lug along and that extra weight naturally greatly
handicapped him. It was a thrilling race--the coast only one day away
and life or death the prize! Who can imagine the feelings of the poor
slave? But with a stout heart he struggled on through poisonous
morasses, and pushed his way through snaky creepers. The afternoon sun
slowly sank toward the western horizon and--
The locomotive at this point of the story screeched loudly. The wheels
grated on the track and my official friend leaped off the cow-catcher.
"Here!" I shouted, "what's the finish of that story?"
"I'll tell you the rest the next time I see you," he sang out, and so I
don't know just how the story ended.