Part 9

The mess-room was a large room, or rather a large thatched roof standing on many pillars of sun-dried brick. In place of walls nothing more substantial than mosquito netting interposed itself between the diners and the gaze of the native multitude, comprising the station garrison, and so on. This system of architecture suits the climate admirably, its sole drawback being its publicity. For when the inmates of such a structure have the playful dinner habits of our forefathers, without their heads, and try to drink each other under the table, and when, moreover, the casualties are removed by native servants from that ignominious position one after the other, speechless, prostrate and puking, naturally the whole affair becomes a kind of “movie” show, with sounds added, for the native population. When, for instance, the Chef de Post, whose image is intimately connected in most of the spectators’ minds with floggings, ambitiously tries to mount the table, fails and falls flat, the “thunders of applause” of our newspapers best describe the reception of his downfall by the audience.

At the dinner in question we started well. One member of the mess contributed five dozen of bottled beer. Another a case of whisky. A demi-john or two of the rough ration table wine rendered somewhat alcoholic by the vagaries of wine in the Tropics was also available; but the effort of the evening was when a sporting Count produced a bottle of Curaçao. We sat down.

Directly in front of me, in the usual position, I found some plates, a knife, fork and spoon. But on three sides I was surrounded by eggs. There were, I think, three dozen of them. On looking round I observed that each diner was similarly provided. Then soup arrived, very strong, good and liberally flavoured with garlic. It was made from buffalo killed by the Post’s native hunters. Meanwhile I noticed my neighbours handing out their eggs to the boys and giving instructions regarding them. I was at a loss. Hitherto I had regarded my eggs as being boiled and ready to eat, all the time mildly wondering how I was to eat so many. Then I caught the word omelette pass my neighbour’s lips as he handed a dozen or two to the boy. I tumbled to it. They were raw and you simply handed them out as you fancied, to be turned into fried, poached, boiled eggs or omelettes. What a capital idea! I set aside a dozen for an omelette, a half dozen to be fried, and a half dozen to be poached. I thought that if I got through that lot I should have enough.

The next dish appeared and was placed before the senior officer at the head of the table. It looked to me like a small mountain of mashed beetroot. Into its sugar-loaf apex the officer dug a large wooden salad spoon, turning in one rotary motion its perfect sugar-loaf shape into that of an extinct volcano. With deft and practised hand he then broke egg after egg, raw, into the yawning crater. His spare dozen or so were quickly swallowed up and more were supplied. As well as I could judge, the contents of the eggs were in no case examined. To anyone acquainted with the average African egg this means a lot.

On to the sulphur-splotched and quivering mass pepper and salt were liberally poured; then vinegar and a vigorous stirring prepared it for presentation to the one bewildered and suffering guest. I took a moderate helping of the red crater slopes, avoiding the albuminous morass, wondering how you handled it anyhow and what would happen if you broke the containing walls. I watched the dish go the rounds with great interest, hoping someone would be too bold with the large spoon, prematurely burst the crater and be engulfed in the ensuing flood. But, alas! with marvellous dexterity man after man hoicked out a plateful of the nauseating stuff without accident. They were used to it.

Now I tried a taste of the minced beetroot lying before me. It wasn’t beetroot at all. It was raw buffalo flesh. I did not like it awfully. Why, I do not know. I have always admired, theoretically, men who eat raw meat. When I saw the Abyssinians eating their meat raw I did not admire them particularly, and now when I saw the Belgians eating it raw I did not seem to admire them either. And yet when I read of Sandow and the crack boxers eating raw meat I admired them. Perhaps it is the sight of men eating raw meat which stops the admiration, or, perhaps, the men who can safely eat raw meat must be admirable to begin with. Anyhow, this lot revolted me, to the complete extinction of my usually robust appetite. It only recovered when cake was served up with syrup and you poured wine over it, an excellent sweet.

Drinking had meanwhile been going steadily on. I would say that by the time the cake came on each man had absorbed two litres of 18 per cent. wine. I was diligently pressed to drink, but managed to avoid more than my share. I excused myself by saying that I was not used to it, and had rather a light and unreliable head anyhow. As this was really a fact, I was rather astonished to notice that already some of the diners were beginning to show unmistakable signs of deep drinking. I subsequently discovered that while there was liquor in the station the drinking of it went on more or less night and day.

Towards the end of the meal some bottles of fine wine were produced and ran their course. After dinner beer was produced and diligently dealt with as a preliminary to the drinking of the case of whisky. This latter was regarded as serious drinking, requiring careful preparation. I have noticed the same curious attitude towards whisky in Frenchmen also. They affect to regard it as a frightfully potent and insidious drink. One will often see an absinthe-sodden toper take a ludicrously small tot of whisky, drowning it with a quart of water on the score of its great strength.

They began to taunt me with not drinking level. Stupid remarks were made about Englishmen and their inability to drink. I helped myself to a moderately large peg of whisky—which was good—and drank.

Now, they took this act to be a direct challenge. Here was a miserable Englishman taking far more whisky and far less water than they themselves were in the habit of taking. It was enough. The man to whom I passed the bottle had to go one better, taking a large peg; and so it went on progressing round the table until, about half-way, the bottle was finished. More were soon brought, uncorked and placed ready. When it came to a man opposite me I could see his hand tremble as with pale determination he poured out what he believed to be the strongest liquor in the world. With shouts of defiance the second bottle was drained, having passed up about four places. From noisy drinking the affair passed into a disorderly debauch. Diner after diner fell and was removed, until there remained seated but two men and myself. One was a Dane of fine physique, and the other was the Belgian Count. We looked at each other and smiled. We all thought we were strictly sober, but the Count, at any rate, was mistaken; for, when he rose to fetch another bottle of Curaçao from his boxes, he, too, joined the casualties. The Dane and I carried him to his bed, found his keys in his trouser pocket, unlocked his boxes and found the liquor, soberly drank the contents round the corpse of the fallen and toasted the Count with the dregs of his excellent stuff as the sun came blazing over the horizon and the station sweepers got busy. That Dane was hard at work an hour afterwards.

I had now some two months to while away somehow until my hunting permit should arrive. I took a flying trip down through Uganda and got together a fine lot of Wanyamweze porters ready for the hunting when it should begin. I took sixty of these boys, as I was pretty confident of getting the permit, and quite confident of getting elephant, anyhow. I arrived back at Lado and was glad to hear from the Treasury man that he had the permit for me all in order. He pointed out to me that the permit stated that the hunting of elephants was not to begin until the middle of May. It was then March, and here was I with a large safari and everything ready to begin. I was wondering what to do about it when whom should I see but my friend the Treasurer. I pointed out my difficulty, which he quite saw. He said it was unfortunate, very, shaking his head and looking thoughtfully away. The true significance of this pretty gesture was lost on me at first, and he had to put it pretty broadly to me that, if he were squared, it would be possible to begin right away. I did not do so, and thereby made a bitter enemy. One of the considerations dissuading me from oiling this gentleman’s palm was that it seemed to me that, if I squared one, I should have to square all, a somewhat too costly business.

Passing over to the English side of the Nile, I occupied myself as well as I could obtaining my two elephants allowed on my Uganda licence from the sporting herd of cow elephant which then haunted the Gondokoro region. This cow herd was even then notorious for chasing travellers on the Nimule-Gondokoro road, and had killed several natives and a gun-bearer of the D.C. who was trying to scare them from some native gardens. I fell in with them only a few miles from the post and managed to kill two passable herd bulls. One of these, shot in the brain, fell upon a large calf, pinning it to the ground in such a fashion that neither could the calf release itself nor could I and my boy help it do so. Nothing could be done without more help, so I sent the boy off to the camp for all hands. Meanwhile I waited under some trees 100 yds. from the dead bull and living calf. The latter was crying in a distressing way, and suddenly the cow herd came rushing along back to it. They surrounded it and crowded all about it while some of them made short rushes here and there, trunks and ears tossing about, with plenty of angry trumpeting. Now, I thought, we shall see a proof of the wonderful intelligence of the elephant. If elephants really do help off their wounded comrades, as is so often and so affectingly described by hunters, surely they will release a trapped youngster. All they have to do is to give a lift with their powerful trunks and the trick is done. Nothing of the sort happened. After a couple of hours of commotion and stamping about all round the spot my boys arrived, and it was time to drive off the herd. I found this was not so easy as it looked. First I shouted at them, man-fashion. Several short angry rushes in our direction was the answer. The boys did not like it, and I certainly did not want to do any cow shooting, so I tried the dodge of trying to imitate hyenas or lions. Whenever I had tried these curious sounds on elephant before it had invariably made them at first uneasy and then anxious to go away. But here was tougher material. They drew more closely round the fallen bulls and more tossing fronts were presented. As for any moving off there was no sign of it. I redoubled my efforts; I screeched and boomed myself hoarse, and I am certain that any other herd of elephants would have rushed shrieking from the spot. But nothing would move the Gondokoro herd. Even when I fired repeatedly over their heads nothing much happened, but when I pasted the dusty ground about their trunks with bullets they began to move quite slowly and with much stopping and running back. It was a gallant herd of ladies; very different its behaviour from that of a bull herd in a similar situation.

When the ground was clear we seized the head of the dead bull and with a combined heave raised it sufficiently to release the calf, but it was too late, he was dead.

Having entered my rifles at Lado and cleared them through the Douane, it was not necessary again to visit a Belgian post. So when the hunting season opened, I already had a herd of bull elephant located. Naturally, I lost no time when the date arrived. The date, that is, according to my calculations. This matter is of some importance, as I believe I was afterwards accused of being too soon. I may have begun a day or even two days before the date, but to the best of my knowledge it was the opening date when I found a nice little herd of bulls, several of which I killed with the brain shot. I was using at that time a very light and sweet-working Mann-Sch. carbine, ·256 bore and weighing only 5¼ lb. With this tiny and beautiful little weapon I had extraordinary luck, and I should have continued to use it in preference to my other rifles had not its Austrian ammunition developed the serious fault of splitting at the neck. After that discovery I reverted to my well-tried and always trusty 7 mm. Mauser.

My luck was right in on that safari. The time of year was just right. All the elephant for 100 miles inland were crowded into the swamps lining the Nile banks. Hunting was difficult only on account of the high grass. To surmount this one required either a dead elephant or a tripod to stand on. From such an eminence others could generally be shot. And the best of it was the huge herds were making so much noise themselves that only a few of them could hear the report of the small-bore. None of the elephant could be driven out of the swamps. Whenever they came to the edge and saw the burnt-up country before them, they wheeled about and re-entered the swamp with such determination that nothing I could do would shake it. Later on when the rains came and the green stuff sprang up everywhere—in a night, as it were—scarcely an elephant could be found in the swamps.

Just when things were at their best tragedy darkened the prospect. Three of my boys launched and loaded with ivory a leaky dug-out. The leaks they stopped in the usual manner with clay, and shoved off. The Nile at this place was about a mile broad, and when about half way the entire end of the canoe fell out; it had been stuck in with clay. Down went everything. Now, here is a curious thing. Out of the three occupants two could swim. These two struck out for the shore and were drawn under by “crocs.,” while the one who could not swim clung to the barely floating canoe, and was presently saved. He kept trying to climb into it from the side, which resulted, of course, in rolling it over and over. It may well be that to this unusual form of canoe manœuvring he owed his life. At any rate, the crocs. never touched him. A gloom settled on the camp that night certainly; but in Africa, death in, to us, strange forms produces but little impression on the native mind, and all was jolly again in a day or two.

After about two months’ hunting it became necessary to bury ivory. The safari could no longer carry it, so a site was chosen close to the river bank and a huge pit dug. Large as it was, it barely took all our beautiful elephant teeth. Ivory has awkward shapes and different curves, and cannot be stowed closely. Consequently there was much earth left over after filling the pit, to show all and sundry where excavating had taken place. Where cattle or donkeys are available, the spot is enclosed by a fence of bushes, and the animals soon obliterate all traces, but here we had nothing. So to guard our precious hoard I erected a symbol which might have been mistaken by a white man for a cross made in a hurry, while its objectless appearance conveyed to the African mind the sure impress of “medicine.” I remember that to one rickety arm I suspended an empty cartridge and the tip of a hippo’s tail. That the medicine was good was shown three or four months later when I sent some boys for the ivory. They found that the soil had been washed away from the top, exposing completely one tusk and parts of the others, but that otherwise the cache was untouched. In spite of my giving to the boy in charge of this party one length of stick for each tusk contained in the pit, he returned with one short of the proper number. To convince him of this fact it was necessary to line out the ivory and then to cover each tusk with one bit of stick, when, of course, there remained one stick over. Straightway that party had a good feed and set off for the pit again, well over a hundred miles away. It never occurred to them that one tusk might have been stolen. They were right. Through just feeling that they themselves would not have touched anything, guarded as our pit was guarded, they judged correctly that no other native man would do so. At the bottom of the open pit and now exposed by the rains was found the missing tusk.

After the hot work of the dry season in the swamps the open bush country, with still short grass, was ideal for the foot-hunter. The country was literally swarming with game of all sorts. I remember in one day seeing six white rhino besides elephant, buffalo and buck of various kinds. Then happened a thing that will sound incredible to most ears. I ran to a standstill, or rather to a walking pace, a herd of elephant. It happened thus. Early one morning I met with a white rhino, carrying a magnificent horn. I killed him for the horn. At the shot I heard the alarm rumble of elephant. Soon I was up to a large herd of bulls, cows, half-growns and calves. They were not yet properly alarmed, and were travelling slowly along. Giving hasty instructions to my boy to find the safari and to then camp it at the water nearest to the white rhino, I tailed on to that elephant herd. The sun then indicated about 8 a.m., and at sundown (6 p.m.) there we were passing the carcase of the dead rhino at a footpace. By pure luck we had described a huge circle, and it was only by finding the dead rhino that I knew where I was. Throughout that broiling day I had run and run, sweating out the moisture I took in at occasional puddles in the bush, sucking it through closed teeth to keep out the wriggling things. At that time I was not familiar with the oblique shot at the brain from behind, and I worked hard for each shot by racing up to a position more or less at right angles to the beast to be shot. Consequently I gave myself a great deal of unnecessary trouble. That I earned each shot will become apparent when I state that although I had the herd well in hand by about 2 p.m., the total bag for the day was but fifteen bulls. To keep behind them was easy, the difficulty was that extra burst of speed necessary to overtake and range alongside them. The curious thing was that they appeared to be genuinely distressed by the sun and the pace. In the latter part of the day, whenever I fired I produced no quickening of the herd’s speed whatever. No heads turned, no flourishing of trunks, and no attempted rushes by cows as in the morning. Just a dull plodding of thoroughly beaten animals. This day’s hunting has always puzzled me. I have attempted the same thing often since, but have never been able to live with them for more than a short distance. Although a large herd, it was not so large but that every individual of it was thoroughly alarmed by each shot. I think that perhaps they committed a fatal mistake in not killing me with a burst of speed at the start. I left them when I recognised the dead rhino, and found camp soon afterwards. The next two days I rested in camp, while the cutting-out gang worked back along the trail of the herd, finding and de-tusking the widely separated bodies of the dead elephants.

Shortly after leaving this camp four bull elephants were seen in the distance. As I went for them, and in passing through some thick bush, we came suddenly on two white rhino. They came confusedly barging about at very close range, and then headed straight for the safari. Now, it is usual for all porters familiar with the black rhino to throw down their loads crash bang whenever a rhino appears to be heading in their direction. Much damage then ensues to ivory if the ground be hard, and to crockery and bottles in any case. To prevent this happening I quickly killed the rhino, hoping that the shots would not alarm the elephants. We soon saw that they were still feeding slowly along, but before reaching them we came upon a lion lying down. I did not wish to disturb the elephants, but I did want his skin, which had a nice dark mane. While I hesitated he jumped up and stood broadside on. I fired a careful shot and got him. He humped his back and subsided with a little cough, while the bullet whined away in the distance. At the shot a lioness jumped up and could have been shot, but I let her go. Then on to our main objective.

This morning’s work shows what a perfect game paradise I was then in.

Presently King Leopold of Belgium died, and the evacuation of the Lado began. As I mentioned before, the Belgians had six months in which to carry this out. Instead of six months they were pretty well out of it in six weeks, and now there started a kind of “rush” for the abandoned country. All sorts of men came. Government employees threw up their jobs. Masons, contractors, marine engineers, army men, hotel keepers and others came, attracted by the tales of fabulous quantities of ivory. More than one party was fired with the resolve to find Emin Pasha’s buried store. It might almost have been a gold “rush.”

Into the Enclave then came this horde. At first they were for the most part orderly law-abiding citizens, but soon this restraint was thrown off. Finding themselves in a country where even murder went unpunished, every man became a law unto himself. Uganda could not touch him, the Sudan had no jurisdiction for six months, and the Belgians had gone. Some of the men went utterly bad and behaved atrociously to the natives, but the majority were too decent to do anything but hunt elephants. But the few bad men made it uncommonly uncomfortable for the decent ones. The natives became disturbed, suspicious, shy and treacherous. The game was shot at, missed, wounded or killed by all sorts of people who had not the rudiments of hunter-craft or rifle shooting. The Belgian posts on the new frontier saw with alarm this invasion of heavily armed safaris; in some cases I believe they thought we might be trying some kind of Jameson raid on the Kilo goldfields, or something of that sort. Whatever they thought, I know that in one case their representative was in a highly dangerous state of nerves. He was at Mahagi on Lake Albert Edward. I happened to be passing down the lake in my steel canoe. My boys and gear followed in a large dug-out. With the rising of the sun a breeze sprang up, and with it a lop on the water sufficient to alarm the boys in the dug-out. They happened to be passing Mahagi Port at the moment. I was miles ahead and out of sight. They decided to wait in the sheltered waters of Port Mahagi until the breeze should die down. They did so, and on landing were promptly seized by Belgian soldiery, made to unload my gear, and to carry it up to the fort.

Some hours later I came paddling along shore searching every bay for my lost safari. Crossing the mouth of Mahagi Port, and never dreaming that they would have put in there, what should I see through my glasses but my large dug-out lying on the beach, abandoned. I entered to investigate, but could see none of my boys about. Some natives told me they had been marched up to the fort.