TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND
By Agnes Herbert
The Record of a Shooting Trip
With Twenty-Five Illustrations Reproduced from Photographs
London: John Lane
MCMVIII
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TO
THE LEADER OF
THE OPPOSITION SHOOT
SOLDIER, SHIKARI, AND SOMETIME
MISOGYNIST
TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND
CHAPTER I--WE SET OUT FOR SOMALILAND
```_This weaves itself perforce into my business_
`````King Lear=
|It is not that I imagine the world is panting for another tale about a
shoot. I am aware that of the making of sporting books there is no end.
Simply--I want to write. And in this unassuming record of a big shoot,
engineered and successfully carried through by two women, there may be
something of interest; it is surely worth more than a slight
endeavour to engage the even passing interest of one person of average
intelligence in these days of universal boredom.
I don’t know whether the idea of our big shoot first emanated from my
cousin or myself. I was not exactly a tenderfoot, neither was she. We
had both been an expedition to the Rockies at a time when big game there
was not so hard to find, but yet less easy to get at. We did not go to
the Rockies with the idea of shooting, our sole _raison d’être_ being to
show the heathen Chinee how not to cook; but incidentally the charm of
the chase captured us, and we exchanged the gridiron for the gun. So
at the end of March 190-we planned a sporting trip to Somaliland--very
secretly and to ourselves, for women hate being laughed at quite as much
as men do, and that is very much indeed.
My cousin is a wonderful shot, and I am by no means a duffer with a
rifle. As to our courage--well, we could only trust we had sufficient
to carry us through. We felt we had, and with a woman intuition is
everything. If she feels she is not going to fail, you may take it from
me she won’t. Certainly it is one thing to look a lion in the face
from England to gazing at him in Somaliland. But we meant to meet him
somehow.
Gradually and very carefully we amassed our stores, and arranged for
their meeting us in due course. We collected our kit, medicines, and
a thousand and one needful things, and at last felt we had almost
everything, and yet as little as possible. Even the little seemed too
much as we reflected on the transport difficulty. We sorted our things
most carefully--I longed for the floor-space of a cathedral to use as
a spreading-out ground--and glued a list of the contents of each
packing-case into each lid.
To real sportsmen I shall seem to be leaving the most important point
to the last--the rifles, guns, and ammunition. But, you see, I am only a
sportswoman by chance, not habit. I know it is the custom with your born
sportsman to place his weapons first, minor details last. “Nice customs
curtsey to great kings,” they say, and so it must be here. For King
Circumstance has made us the possessors of such wondrous modern rifles,
&c., as to leave us no reason to think of endeavouring to supply
ourselves with better. We, fortunately, have an uncle who is one of the
greatest shikaris of his day, and his day has only just passed, his sun
but newly set. A terribly bad mauling from a lion set up troubles in
his thigh, and blood poisoning finally ended his active career. He will
never hunt again, but he placed at our disposal every beautiful and
costly weapon he owned, together with his boundless knowledge. He
insisted on our taking many things that would otherwise have been left
behind, and his great trust in our powers inspired us with confidence.
It is to his help we owe the entire success of our expedition.
It would be an impertinence for a tyro like myself to offer any remarks
on the merits or demerits of any rifle. Not only do the fashions change
almost as quickly as in millinery, not only do great shikaris advise,
advertise, and adventure with any weapon that could possibly be of
service to anyone, but my knowledge, even after the experience gained
in our long shoot, is confined to the very few firearms we had with us.
They might not have met with unqualified approval from all men; they
certainly served us well. After all, that is the main point.
Our battery consisted of:
Three 12-bore rifles.
Two double-barrelled hammerless ejecting .500 Expresses.
One .35 Winchester.
Two small .22 Winchesters.
One single-barrel .350.
One 410 bore collector’s gun.
A regular _olla podrida_ in rifles.
My uncle selected these from his armoury as being the ones of all others
he would feel safest in sending us out with. There may, in the opinion
of many, be much more suitable ones for women to use, but, speaking as
one who had the using of them, I must say I think the old shikari did
the right thing, and if I went again the same rifles would accompany me.
My uncle is a small man, with a shortish arm, and therefore his reach
about equalled ours, and his rifles might have been made for us.
We also towed about with us two immensely heavy shot guns. They were a
great nuisance, merely adding to the baggage, and we never used them as
far as I remember.
As we meant frequently to go about unescorted, a revolver or pistol
seemed indispensable in the belt, and under any conditions such a
weapon would be handy and give one a sense of security. On the advice of
another great sportsman we equipped ourselves with a good shikar pistol
apiece, 12-bore; and I used mine on one occasion very effectively at
close quarters with an ard-wolf, so can speak to the usefulness and
efficiency of the weapon.
It was the “cutting the ivy” season in Suburbia when we drove through it
early one afternoon, and in front of every pill-box villa the suburban
husband stood on a swaying ladder as he snipped away, all ora ora
unmindful of the rampant domesticity of the sparrows. The fourteenth of
February had long passed, and the fourteenth is to the birds what Easter
Monday is to the lower orders, a general day for getting married.
A few days in town amid the guilty splendour of one of the caravan-serais
in Northumberland Avenue were mostly spent in imbibing knowledge. My
uncle never wearied of his subject, and it was to our interest to listen
carefully. Occasionally he would wax pessimist, and express his doubts
of our ability to see the trip through; but he was kind enough to say
he knows no safer shot than myself. “Praise from Cæsar.” Though I draw
attention to it that shouldn’t! The fragility of my physique bothered
him no end. I assured him over and over that my appearance is nothing to
go by, and that I am, as a matter of fact, a most wiry person.
This shoot of ours was no hurried affair. We had been meditating it for
months, and had, to some extent, arranged all the difficult parts a long
time before we got to the actual purchases of stores, and simple things
of the kind. We had to obtain special permits to penetrate the Ogaden
country and beyond to the Marehan and the Haweea, if we desired to go so
far. Since the Treaty with King Menelik in 1897 the Ogaden and onwards
is out of the British sphere of influence.
How our permits were obtained I am not at liberty to say; but without
them we should have been forced to prance about on the outskirts of
every part where game is abundant. By the fairy aid of these open
sesames we were enabled to traverse the country in almost any part, and
would have been passed from Mullah to Sheik, from Sheik to Mullah, had
we not taken excellent care to avoid, as far as we could, the settled
districts where these gentry reside. At one time all the parts we shot
over were free areas, and open to any sportsman who cared to take on the
possible dangers of penetrating the far interior of Somaliland, but
now the hunting is very limited and prescribed. We were singularly
fortunate, and owe our surprising good luck to that much maligned,
useful, impossible to do without passport to everything worth having
known as “influence.”
The tents we meant to use on the shoot were made for us to a pattern
supplied. They were fitted with poles of bamboo, of which we had one to
spare in case of emergencies. The ropes, by particular request, were of
cotton, in contradistinction to hemp, which stretches so abominably.
Two skinning knives were provided, and some little whet-stones, an axe,
a bill-hook, two hammers, a screwdriver--my _vade mecum_--nails, and
many other needful articles. We trusted to getting a good many things at
Berbera, but did not like to leave everything to the last. Our “canned
goods” and all necessaries in the food line we got at the Army and Navy
Stores. Field-glasses, compasses, and a good telescope our generous
relative contributed.
They say that the best leather never leaves London, that there only can
the best boots be had. This is as may be. Anyway the shooting boots made
for us did us well, and withstood prodigious wear and tear.
The night before our departure we had a “Goodbye” dinner and, as a great
treat, were taken to a music-hall. Of course it was not my first visit,
but really, if I have any say in the matter again, it will be the last.
Some genius--a man, of course--says, somewhere or other, women have
no sense of humour--I wonder if he ever saw a crowd of holiday-making
trippers exchanging hats--and I am willing to concede he must be right.
I watched that show unmoved the while the vast audience rocked with
laughter.
The _pièce-de-résistance_ of the evening was provided by a “comic”
singer, got up like a very-much-the-worse-for-wear curate, who sang to
us about a girl with whom he had once been in love. Matters apparently
went smoothly enough until one fateful day he discovered his inamorata’s
nose was false, and, what seemed to trouble him more than all, was stuck
on with cement. It came off at some awkward moment. This was meant to be
funny. If such an uncommon thing happened that a woman had no nose, and
more uncommon still, got so good an imitation as to deceive him as to
its genuineness in the first place, it would not be affixed with
cement. But allowing such improbabilities to pass in the sacred cause
of providing amusement, surely the woman’s point of view would give us
pause. It would be so awful for her in every way that it would quite
swamp any discomfort the man would have to undergo. I felt far more
inclined to cry than laugh, and the transcendent vulgarity of it all
made one ashamed of being there.
The next item on the programme was a Human Snake, who promised us
faithfully that he would dislocate his neck. He marched on to a gaudy
dais, and after tying himself in sundry knots and things, suddenly
jerked, and his neck elongated, swinging loosely from his body. It was
a very horrid sight. An attendant stepped forward and told us the Human
Snake had kept his promise. The neck was dislocated. My only feeling in
the matter was a regret he had not gone a step farther and broken it.
All this was because I have no sense of humour. I don’t like music-hall
entertainments. I would put up with being smoked into a kipper if the
performance rewarded one at all. It is so automatic, so sad. There is
no joy, or freshness, or life about it. ’Tis a squalid way of earning
money.
At last every arrangement was arranged, our clothes for the trip duly
packed. Being women, we had naturally given much thought to this part of
the affair. We said “Adieu” to our wondering and amazed relatives, who,
with many injunctions to us to “write every day,” and requests that we
should at all times abjure damp beds, saw us off _en route_ for Berbera,
_via_ Aden, by a P. and O. liner.
I think steamer-travelling is most enjoyable--that is, unless one
happens to be married, in which case there is no pleasure in it, or
in much else for the matter of that. I have always noticed that the
selfishness which dominates every man more or less, usually more,
develops on board ship to an abnormal extent. They invariably contrive
to get toothache or lumbago just as they cross the gangway to go aboard.
This is all preliminary to securing the lower berth with some appearance
of equity. What does it matter that the wife detests top berths, not
to speak of the loss of dignity she must endure at the idea even of
clambering up? Of course the husband does not ask her to take the
top berth. No husband can _ask_ his wife to make herself genuinely
uncomfortable to oblige him. He has to hint. He hints in all kinds of
ways--throws things about the cabin, and ejaculates parenthetically,
“How am I to climb up there with a tooth aching like mine?” or “I shall
be lamed for life with my lumbago if I have to get up to that height.”
Having placed the wife in the position of being an unfeeling brute if
she insists on taking the lower berth for herself, there is nothing for
it but to go on as though the top berth were the be-all of the voyage
and her existence.
“Let me have the top berth, Percy,” she pleads; “you know how I love
mountaineering.”
“Oh, very well. You may have it. Don’t take it if you don’t want it, or
if you’d rather not. I should hate to seem selfish.”
And so it goes on. Then in the morning, in spite of comic papers to the
contrary, the husband has to have first go-in at the looking-glass
and the washing apparatus, which makes the wife late for breakfast and
everything is cold.
Cecily and I shared a most comfortable cabin amidships, together with a
Christian Science lady who lay in her berth most days crooning hymns
to herself in between violent paroxysms of _mal-de-mer_. I always
understood that in Christian Science you do not have to be ill if you do
not want to. This follower of the faith was very bad indeed, and
didn’t seem to like the condition of things much. We rather thought
of questioning her on the apparent discrepancy, but judged it wiser to
leave the matter alone. It is as well to keep on good terms with one’s
cabin mate.
Nothing really exciting occurred on the voyage, but one of the
passengers provided a little amusement by her management, or rather
mismanagement, of an awkward affair. Almost as soon as we started
I noticed we had an unusually pretty stewardess, and that a warrior
returning to India appeared to agree with me. He waylaid her at every
opportunity, and I often came on them whispering in corners of passages
o’ nights. Of course it had nothing to do with me what the stewardess
did, for I am thankful to say I did not require her tender ministrations
on the voyage at all. Well, in the next cabin to ours was a silly little
woman--I had known her for years--going out to join her husband, a
colonel of Indian Lancers. She made the most never-ending fuss about the
noise made by a small baby in the adjoining cabin. One night, very late,
Mrs. R. could not, or would not, endure the din any longer, so decided
to oust the stewardess from her berth in the ladies’ cabin, the
stewardess to come to the vacated one next the wailing baby. All this
was duly carried into effect, and the whole ship was in complete silence
when the most awful shrieks rent the air. Most of the inhabitants of my
corridor turned out, and all made their way to the ladies’ cabin, which
seemed the centre of the noise. There we found the ridiculous Mrs. R.
alone, and in hysterics. After a little, we could see for ourselves
there was nothing much the matter. She gasped out that she had evicted
the stewardess, and was just falling off to sleep when a tall figure
appeared by the berth, clad in pale blue pyjamas--it seemed to vex her
so that it was pale blue, and for the life of me I could not see why
they were any worse than dark red--and calling her “Mabel, darling!”
embraced her rapturously.
“And you know,” said Mrs. R. plaintively, “my name is _not_ Mabel! It is
Maud.”
In the uproar the intruder had of course escaped, but Mrs. R.
unhesitatingly proclaimed him to be Captain H., the officer whom I had
noticed at first. We discovered the stewardess sleeping peacefully, or
making a very good imitation of it, and she was wakened up and again
dislodged, whilst Mrs. R. prepared to put up with the wailing baby for
the remains of the night.
Next morning the captain of the ship interviewed the warrior, who
absolutely denied having been anywhere near the ladies’ cabin at the
time mentioned, and aided by a youthful subaltern, who perjured himself
like a man, proved a most convincing _alibi_. Matters went on until
one day on deck Captain H. walked up to Mrs. R. and reproached her for
saying he was the man who rudely disturbed her slumbers in the wee sma’
hours. She, like the inane creature she is, went straight to the skipper
and reported that Captain H. was terrorising her. I heard that evening,
as a great secret, that the warrior had been requested to leave the ship
at Aden. Where the secret came in I don’t quite know, for the whole lot
of us knew of it soon after.=
````Secret de deux,
````Secret des dieux;
````Secret de trois,
````Secret de tous.=
Do you know that?
I was not surprised to hear Captain H. casually remark at breakfast next
morning that he thought of stopping off at Aden, as he had never been
ashore there, and had ideas of exploring the Hinterland some time, and
besides it was really almost foolish to pass a place so often and yet
know it not at all. I went to his rescue, and said it was a most sound
idea. I had always understood it was the proper thing to see Aden once
and never again. He looked at me most gratefully, and afterwards showed
us much kindness in many small ways.
Mrs. R. preened herself mightily on having unmasked a villain. She
assured me the warrior’s reputation was damaged for all time. The silly
little woman did not seem to grasp the fact that a man’s reputation is
like a lobster’s claw: a new one can be grown every time the old one is
smashed. In fact we had a lobster at home in the aquarium, and it hadn’t
even gone to the trouble of dropping _one_ reputation--I mean claw--but
had three at once!
It was one of the quaintest things imaginable to watch the attitude of
the various passengers towards the cause of all the trouble. A community
of people shut up together on board ship become quite like a small
town, of the variety where every one knows everyone else, _and_ their
business. Previous to the semi-subdued scandal Captain H. had been in
great request. He was a fine-looking man, and a long way more versatile
than most. Now many of the people who had painstakingly scraped
acquaintance with him felt it necessary to look the other way as he
passed. Others again--women, of course--tried to secure an introduction
from sheer inquisitiveness.
The sole arbiter of what is what, a _multum in parvo_ of the correct
thing to do, we discovered in a young bride, a perfect tome of
learning. I think--I thought so before I met this walking ethic of
propriety--there is no doubt Mrs. Grundy is not the old woman she is
represented to be, with cap and spectacles, though for years we have
pictured her thus. It is all erroneous. Mrs. Grundy is a newly married
youthful British matron of the middle class. There is no greater
stickler for the proprieties living. Having possessed herself of a
certificate that certifies respectability, she likes to know everyone
else is hall-marked and not pinchbeck. She proposed to bring the romance
of the stewardess and the officer before the notice of the directors
of the company, and had every confidence in getting one or two people
dismissed over it. All hail for the proprieties! This good lady markedly
and ostentatiously cut the disgraced warrior, who was her _vis-à-vis_ at
table, and when I asked her why she considered a man guilty of anything
until he had been proved beyond doubt to merit cutting, she looked at me
with a supercilious eyebrow raised, and a world of pity for my ignorance
in her tone as she answered firmly: “I must have the moral courage
necessary to cut an acquaintance lacking principle.”
“Wouldn’t it be infinitely more courageous to stick to one?” I said, and
left her.
We had a very narrow little padre on board too, going out to take on
some church billet Mussoorie way. He was bent on collecting, from all of
us who were powerless to evade him, enough money to set up a screen
of sorts in his new tabernacle. Although he did not approve of the
sweepstakes on the day’s run, he sacrificed his feeling sufficiently to
accept a free share, and would ask us for subscriptions besides, as we
lounged about the deck individually or in small groups, always opening
the ball by asking our valueless opinions as to the most suitable
subject--biblical, of course--for illustration. He came to me one day
and asked me what I thought about the matter. Did I think Moses with his
mother would make a good picture for a screen? I had no views at all,
so had to speedily manufacture some. I gave it as my opinion that if
a screen picture were a necessity Moses would certainly do as well as
anybody else--in fact better. For, after all, Moses was the greatest
leader of men the world has ever known. He engineered an expedition to
freedom, and no man can do more than that.
But I begged the padre to give Moses his rightful mother at last. For
the mother of Moses was not she who took all the credit for it. The
mother of Moses was undoubtedly the Princess, his father some handsome
Israelite, and that is why Moses was for ever in heart hankering after
his own people, the Israelites. The Princess arranged the little drama
of the bullrushes, most sweetly pathetic and tender of stories, arranged
too that the baby should be found at the crucial moment, and then gave
the little poem to the world to sing through the centuries.
I shocked the parson profoundly, and he never asked me to subscribe
again. He was a narrow, bigoted little creature, and I should think has
the church and the screen very much to himself by now. I went to hear
him take service in the saloon on Sunday. He was quite the sort of padre
that makes one feel farther off from heaven than when one was a boy.
I often wonder why so clever a man as Omar asked: “Why nods the drowsy
worshipper outside?” He must have known the inevitable result had the
drowsy worshipper gone in.
I fell asleep during the sermon, and only wakened up as it was about
ending, just as the padre closed an impassioned harangue with “May we
all have new hearts, may we all have pure hearts, may we all have good
hearts, may we all have sweet hearts,” and the graceless Cecily says
that my “Amen” shook the ship, which was, I need hardly tell you, “a
most unmitigated misstatement.”
Aden was reached at last--“The coal hole of the East.” As a
health resort, I cannot conscientiously recommend it. The heat was
overwhelming, and the local Hotel Ritz sadly wanting in some things and
overdone in others. We found it necessary to spend some days there and
many sleepless nights, pursuing during the latter the big game in our
bedrooms. “Keatings” was of no use. I believe the local insects were
case-hardened veterans, and rather liked the powder than otherwise. What
nights we had! But every one was in like case, for from all over the
house came the sound of slippers banging and much scuffling, and from
the room opposite to mine language consigning all insects, the Aden
variety in particular, to some even warmer place.
In some ways the hotel was more than up to date. Nothing so ordinary
as a mere common or garden bell in one’s room. Instead, a sort of dial,
like the face of a clock, with every conceivable want written round it,
from a great desire to meet the manager to a wish to call out the
local Fire Brigade. You turned on a small steel finger to point at your
particular requirement, rang a bell--_et voilà!_ It seems mere carping
to state that the matter ended with _voilà_. The dials were there, you
might ring if you liked--what more do you want? Some day some one will
answer. Meanwhile, one can always shout.
We met two other shooting parties at our _auberge_. The first comprised
a man and his elderly wife who were not immediately starting, some of
their kit having gone astray. He was a noted shot, and Madam had been
some minor trip with him and meant to accompany another. She was an
intensely cross-grained person, quite the last woman I should yearn to
be cooped up in a tent with for long at a time. Cecily’s idea of it was
that the shikari husband meant, sooner or later, to put into practice
the words of that beautiful song, “Why don’t you take her out and lose
her?” and stuck to it that we should one day come on head-lines in the
_Somaliland Daily Wail_ reading something like this:=
````GREAT SHIKARI IN TEARS.
````LOOKING FOR THE LOST ONE.
````SOME LIONS BOLT THEIR FOOD.=
The good lady regarded us with manifest disapproval. She considered us
as two lunatics, bound to meet with disaster and misfortune. Being women
alone, we were foredoomed to failure and the most awful things. Our
caravan would murder or abandon us. That much was certain. But she would
not care to say which. Anyway we should not accomplish anything.
She pointed out that a trip of the kind could not by any chance be
manoeuvred to a successful issue without the guidance of a husband. A
husband is an absolute necessity.
I had to confess, shamefacedly enough, that we had not got a husband,
not even one husband, to say nothing of one each, and husbands being so
scarce these days, and so hard to come by, we should really have to try
and manage without. Having by some means or other contrived to annex a
husband for herself, she evinced a true British matron-like contempt for
every other woman not so supremely fortunate.
She talked a great deal about “the haven of a good man’s love.” One
might sail the seas a long time, I think, before one made such a port.
Meanwhile the good lady’s _own_ haven, the elderly shikari, was flirting
with the big drum of the celebrated ladies’ orchestra at the Aden
tea-house.
“All human beans,” for this is what our friend got the word to, as she
was right in the forefront of the g-dropping craze, “should marry. It is
too lonely to live by oneself.”
Until one has been married long enough to appreciate the delight
and blessedness of solitude this may be true, but wise people don’t
dogmatise on so big a subject. Even Socrates told us that whether a
man marries or whether he doesn’t he regrets it. And so it would almost
follow that if one never jumped the precipice matrimonial one would
always have the lurking haunting fear of having been done out of
something good. It may be as well, therefore, to take the header in
quite youthful days and--get it over. But as the wise Cecily pertinently
remarks, you must first catch your hare!
The other shooting party was that of two officers from India, one of
them a distant cousin of mine, who was as much surprised to see me as
I was to see him. They were setting off to Berbera as soon as humanly
possible, like ourselves.
The younger man, my kinsman, took a great fancy to Cecily. At least I
suppose he did, in spite of her assertions to the contrary, for he stuck
to us like a burr. He was really by way of being a nuisance, as we had
a great deal to do in the way of satisfying the excise people, procuring
permits and myriad other things.
One evening I heard the two warriors talking and the elder said, not
dreaming that his voice would carry so clearly: “Look here, if you are
not careful, we shall have those two girls trying to tack on to our
show. And I won’t have it, for they’ll be duffers, of course.”
I laughed to myself, even though I was annoyed. Men are conceited ever,
but this was too much! To imagine we had gone to all the initial expense
and trouble only to join two sportsmen who, true to their masculine
nature, would on all occasions take the best of everything and leave us
to be contented with any small game we could find!
It is true that being called a girl softened my wrath somewhat. One
can’t be called a girl at thirty without feeling a glow of pleasure. I
am thirty. So is Cecily.
I expect you are smiling? I know a woman never passes thirty. It is her
Rubicon, and she cannot cross it.
My uncle had written ahead for us to Berbera to engage, if possible,
his old shikari and head-man, and in addition had sent on copious
instructions as to our needs generally. Our trip was supposed to be a
secret in Aden, but we were inundated with applications from would-be
servants of all kinds. I afterwards discovered that a Somali knows
your business almost before you know it yourself, and in this
second-sight-like faculty is only exceeded in cleverness by the
inhabitants of a little island set in the Irish Sea and sacred to Hall
Caine.