In the Heart of Africa

CHAPTER VI.

Prepa­ra­tions for ad­vance–Mek Nim­mur makes a for­ay–The Ham­ran ele­phant-​hunters–In the haunts of the ele­phant–A des­per­ate charge.

The time was ap­proach­ing when the grass through­out the coun­try would be suf­fi­cient­ly dry to be fired. We ac­cord­ing­ly pre­pared for our ex­pe­di­tion; but it was first nec­es­sary for me to go to Katar­iff, six­ty miles dis­tant, to en­gage men, and to pro­cure a slave in place of old Masara, whose own­er would not trust her in the wild re­gion we were about to vis­it.

I en­gaged six strong Tokrooris for five months, and pur­chased a slave wom­an for thir­ty-​five dol­lars. The name of the wom­an was Bar­rake. She was about twen­ty-​two years of age, brown in com­plex­ion, fat and strong, rather tall, and al­to­geth­er she was a fine, pow­er­ful-​look­ing wom­an, but de­cid­ed­ly not pret­ty. Her hair was elab­orate­ly dressed in hun­dreds of long nar­row curls, so thick­ly smeared with cas­tor oil that the grease had cov­ered her naked shoul­ders. In ad­di­tion to this, as she had been re­cent­ly un­der the hands of the hair­dress­er, there was an amount of fat and oth­er nas­ti­ness up­on her head that gave her the ap­pear­ance of be­ing near­ly gray.

Through the medi­um of Ma­homet I ex­plained to her that she was no longer a slave, as I had pur­chased her free­dom; that she would not even be com­pelled to re­main with us, but she could do as she thought prop­er; that both her mis­tress and I should be ex­ceed­ing­ly kind to her, and we would sub­se­quent­ly find her a good sit­ua­tion in Cairo; in the mean time she would re­ceive good clothes and wages. This, Ma­homet, much against his will, was obliged to trans­late lit­er­al­ly. The ef­fect was mag­ical; the wom­an, who had looked fright­ened and un­hap­py, sud­den­ly beamed with smiles, and with­out any warn­ing she ran to­ward me, and in an in­stant I found my­self em­braced in her lov­ing arms. She pressed me to her bo­som, and smoth­ered me with cas­tor-​oily kiss­es, while her greasy ringlets hung up­on my face and neck. How long this en­ter­tain­ment would have last­ed I can­not tell, but I was obliged to cry “Caf­fa! Caf­fa!” (enough! enough!) as it looked im­prop­er, and the per­fumery was too rich. For­tu­nate­ly my wife was present, but she did not ap­pear to en­joy it more than I did. My snow-​white blouse was soiled and greasy, and for the rest of the day I was a dis­agree­able com­pound of smells–cas­tor oil, tal­low, musk, san­dal-​wood, burnt shells, and Bar­rake.

Ma­homet and Bar­rake her­self, I be­lieve, were the on­ly peo­ple who re­al­ly en­joyed this lit­tle event. “Ha!” Ma­homet ex­claimed, “this is your own fault! You in­sist­ed up­on speak­ing kind­ly, and telling her that she is not a slave; now she thinks that she is one of your WIVES!” This was the re­al fact; the un­for­tu­nate ** Bar­rake ** had de­ceived her­self. Nev­er hav­ing been free, she could not un­der­stand the use of free­dom un­less she was to be a wife. She had un­der­stood my lit­tle ad­dress as a pro­pos­al, and of course she was dis­ap­point­ed; but as an ac­tion for breach of promise can­not be pressed in the Soudan, poor Bar­rake, al­though free, had not the hap­py rights of a free-​born En­glish­wom­an, who can heal her bro­ken heart with a pe­cu­niary plas­ter, and con­sole her­self with dam­ages for the loss of a lover.

We were ready to start, hav­ing our par­ty of ser­vants com­plete, six Tokrooris–Moosa, Ab­doolahi, Ab­der­ach­man, Has­san, Ad­ow, and Had­ji Ali, with Ma­homet, Wat Gam­ma, Bacheet, Ma­homet se­cun­dus (a groom), and Bar­rake; to­tal, eleven men and the cook.

When half way on our re­turn from Katar­iff to Wat el Ne­gur, we found the whole coun­try in alarm, Mek Nim­mur hav­ing sud­den­ly made a for­ay. He had crossed the At­bara, plun­dered the dis­trict, and driv­en off large num­bers of cat­tle and camels, af­ter hav­ing killed a con­sid­er­able num­ber of peo­ple. No doubt the re­ports were some­what ex­ag­ger­at­ed, but the in­hab­itants of the dis­trict were fly­ing from their vil­lages with their herds, and were flock­ing to Katar­iff. We ar­rived at Wat el Ne­gur on the 3d of De­cem­ber, and we now felt the ad­van­tage of our friend­ship with the good Sheik Achmet, who, be­ing a friend of Mek Nim­mur, had saved our ef­fects dur­ing our ab­sence. These would oth­er­wise have been plun­dered, as the rob­bers had paid him a vis­it. He had re­moved our tents and bag­gage to his own house for pro­tec­tion. Not on­ly had he thus pro­tect­ed our ef­fects, but he had tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty of de­liv­er­ing the po­lite mes­sage to Mek Nim­mur that I had en­trust­ed to his charge–ex­press­ing a wish to pay him a vis­it as a coun­try­man and friend of Mr. Mans­field Parkyns, who had for­mer­ly been so well re­ceived by his fa­ther.

My in­ten­tion was to ex­am­ine thor­ough­ly all the great rivers of Abyssinia that were trib­utaries to the Nile. These were the Set­tite, Roy­an, An­grab, Salaam, Ra­had, Din­der, and the Blue Nile. If pos­si­ble, I should tra­verse the Gal­la coun­try, and cross­ing the Blue Nile, I should en­deav­or to reach the White Nile. But this lat­ter idea I sub­se­quent­ly found im­prac­ti­ca­ble, as it would have in­ter­fered with the prop­er sea­son for my pro­ject­ed jour­ney up the White Nile in search of the sources. The Ham­ran Arabs were at this time en­camped about twen­ty- five miles from Wat el Ne­gur. I sent a mes­sen­ger, ac­com­pa­nied by Ma­homet, to the sheik, with the fir­man of the Viceroy, re­quest­ing him to sup­ply me with ele­phant hunters (ag­gageers).

Dur­ing the ab­sence of Ma­homet I re­ceived a very po­lite mes­sage from Mek Nim­mur, ac­com­pa­nied by a present of twen­ty pounds of cof­fee, with an in­vi­ta­tion to pay him a vis­it. His coun­try lay be­tween the Set­tite Riv­er and the Bahr Salaam; thus with­out his in­vi­ta­tion I might have found it dif­fi­cult to tra­verse his ter­ri­to­ry. So far all went well. I re­turned my salaams, and sent word that we in­tend­ed to hunt through the ** Base ** coun­try, af­ter which we should have the hon­or of pass­ing a few days with him on our road to the riv­er Salaam, at which place we in­tend­ed to hunt ele­phants and rhinoceros­es.

Ma­homet re­turned, ac­com­pa­nied by a large par­ty of Ham­ran Arabs, in­clud­ing sev­er­al hunters, one of whom was Sheik Abou Do Rous­soul, the nephew of Sheik Owat. As his name in full was too long, he gen­er­al­ly went by the ab­bre­vi­ation “Abou Do.” He was a splen­did fel­low, a lit­tle above six feet one, with a light ac­tive fig­ure, but ex­ceed­ing­ly well-​de­vel­oped mus­cles. His face was strik­ing­ly hand­some; his eyes were like those of a gi­raffe, but the sud­den glance of an ea­gle light­ed them up with a flash dur­ing the ex­cite­ment of con­ver­sa­tion, which showed lit­tle of the gi­raffe’s gen­tle char­ac­ter. Abou Do was the on­ly tall man of the par­ty; the oth­ers were of mid­dle height, with the ex­cep­tion of a lit­tle fel­low named Jali, who was not above five feet four inch­es, but won­der­ful­ly mus­cu­lar, and in ex­pres­sion a reg­ular dare­dev­il.

There were two par­ties of hunters among the Ham­ran Arabs, one un­der Abou Do, and the oth­er con­sist­ing of four broth­ers Sher­rif. The lat­ter were the most cel­ebrat­ed ag­gageers among the renowned tribe of the Ham­ran. Their fa­ther and grand­fa­ther had been mighty Nim­rods, and the broadswords wield­ed by their strong arms had de­scend­ed to the men who now up­held the pres­tige of the an­cient blades. The el­dest was Taher Sher­rif. His sec­ond broth­er, Roder Sher­rif, was a very small, ac­tive-​look­ing man, with a with­ered left arm. An ele­phant had at one time killed his horse, and on the same oc­ca­sion had driv­en its sharp tusk through the arm of the rid­er, com­plete­ly split­ting the limb, and splin­ter­ing the bone from the el­bow-​joint to the wrist to such an ex­tent that by de­grees the frag­ments had sloughed away, and the arm had be­come shriv­elled and with­ered. It now re­sem­bled a mass of dried leather twist­ed in­to a de­for­mi­ty, with­out the slight­est shape of an arm; this was about four­teen inch­es in length from the shoul­der. The stiff and crip­pled hand, with con­tract­ed fin­gers, re­sem­bled the claw of a vul­ture.

In spite of his maimed con­di­tion, Roder Sher­rif was the most cel­ebrat­ed lead­er in the ele­phant hunt. His was the dan­ger­ous post to ride close to the head of the in­fu­ri­at­ed an­imal and pro­voke the charge, and then to lead the ele­phant in pur­suit, while the ag­gageers at­tacked it from be­hind. It was in the per­for­mance of this du­ty that he had met with the ac­ci­dent, as his horse had fall­en over some hid­den ob­sta­cle and was im­me­di­ate­ly caught. Be­ing an ex­ceed­ing­ly light weight he had con­tin­ued to oc­cu­py this im­por­tant po­si­tion in the hunt, and the rigid fin­gers of the left hand served as a hook, up­on which he could hang the reins.

My bat­tery of ri­fles was now laid up­on a mat for ex­am­ina­tion; they were in beau­ti­ful con­di­tion, and they ex­cit­ed the ad­mi­ra­tion of the en­tire par­ty. The per­fec­tion of work­man­ship did not ap­pear to in­ter­est them so much as the size of the bores. They thrust their fin­gers down each muz­zle, un­til they at last came to the “Ba­by,” when, find­ing that two fin­gers could be eas­ily in­tro­duced, they at once fell in love with that ri­fle in par­tic­ular.

On the 17th of Au­gust, ac­com­pa­nied by the Ger­man, Flo­ri­an, we said good-​by to our kind friend Sheik Achmet and left Wat el Ne­gur. At Geera, ear­ly at day­break, sev­er­al Arabs ar­rived with a re­port that ele­phants had been drink­ing in the riv­er with­in half an hour’s march of our sleep­ing-​place. I im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed with my men, ac­com­pa­nied by Flo­ri­an, and we short­ly ar­rived up­on the tracks of the herd. I had three Ham­ran Arabs as track­ers, one of whom, Taher Noor, had en­gaged to ac­com­pa­ny us through­out the ex­pe­di­tion.

For about eight miles we fol­lowed the spoor through high dried grass and thorny bush, un­til we at length ar­rived at a dense jun­gle of kit­tar–the most formidable of the hooked thorn mi­mosas. Here the tracks ap­peared to wan­der, some ele­phants hav­ing trav­elled straight ahead, while oth­ers had strayed to the right and left. For about two hours we trav­elled up­on the cir­cuitous tracks of the ele­phants to no pur­pose, when we sud­den­ly were star­tled by the shrill trum­pet­ing of one of these an­imals in the thick thorns, a few hun­dred yards to our left. The ground was so in­tense­ly hard and dry that it was im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish the new tracks from the old, which crossed and re­crossed in all di­rec­tions. I there­fore de­cid­ed to walk care­ful­ly along the out­skirts of the jun­gle, trust­ing to find their place of en­trance by the fresh bro­ken boughs. In about an hour we had thus ex­am­ined two or three miles, with­out dis­cov­er­ing a clew to their re­cent path, when we turned round a clump of bush­es, and sud­den­ly came in view of two grand ele­phants, stand­ing at the edge of the dense thorns. Hav­ing our wind, they van­ished in­stant­ly in­to the thick jun­gle. We could not fol­low them, as their course was down wind; we there­fore made a cir­cuit to lee­ward for about a mile, and find­ing that the ele­phants had not crossed in that di­rec­tion, we felt sure that we must come up­on them with the wind in our fa­vor should they still be with­in the thorny jun­gle. This was cer­tain, as it was their fa­vorite re­treat.

With the great­est la­bor I led the way, creep­ing fre­quent­ly up­on my hands and knees to avoid the hooks of the kit­tar bush, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly lis­ten­ing for a sound. At length, af­ter up­ward of an hour passed in this slow and fa­tigu­ing ad­vance, I dis­tinct­ly heard the flap of an ele­phant’s ear, short­ly fol­lowed by the deep gut­tural sigh of one of those an­imals, with­in a few paces; but so dense was the screen of jun­gle that I could see noth­ing. We wait­ed for some min­utes, but not the slight­est sound could be heard; the ele­phants were aware of dan­ger, and they were, like our­selves, lis­ten­ing at­ten­tive­ly for the first in­ti­ma­tion of an en­emy.

This was a high­ly ex­cit­ing mo­ment. Should they charge, there would not be a pos­si­bil­ity of es­cape, as the hooked thorns ren­dered any sud­den move­ment al­most im­prac­ti­ca­ble. In an­oth­er mo­ment there was a tremen­dous crash; and with a sound like a whirl­wind the herd dashed through the crack­ling jun­gle. I rushed for­ward, as I was un­cer­tain whether they were in ad­vance or re­treat. Leav­ing a small sam­ple of my nose up­on a kit­tar thorn, and tear­ing my way, with naked arms, through what, in cold blood, would have ap­peared im­pass­able, I caught sight of two ele­phants lead­ing across my path, with the herd fol­low­ing in a dense mass be­hind them. Fir­ing a shot at the lead­ing ele­phant, sim­ply in the en­deav­or to check the herd, I re­peat­ed with the left-​hand bar­rel at the head of his com­pan­ion. This stag­gered him, and threw the main body in­to con­fu­sion. They im­me­di­ate­ly closed up in a dense mass, and bore ev­ery­thing be­fore them; but the herd ex­hib­it­ed mere­ly an im­pen­etra­ble ar­ray of hind quar­ters wedged to­geth­er so firm­ly that it was im­pos­si­ble to ob­tain a head or shoul­der shot.

I was with­in fif­teen paces of them, and so com­pact­ly were they packed that with all their im­mense strength they could not at once force so ex­ten­sive a front through the tough and pow­er­ful branch­es of the dense kit­tar. For about half a minute they were ab­so­lute­ly checked, and they bored for­ward with all their might in their de­ter­mi­na­tion to open a road through the mat­ted thorns. The elas­tic boughs, bent from their po­si­tion, sprang back with dan­ger­ous force, and would have frac­tured the skull of any one who came with­in their sweep. A very large ele­phant was on the left flank, and for an in­stant he turned oblique­ly to the left. I quick­ly seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty and fired the “Ba­by,” with an ex­plo­sive shell, aimed far back in the flank, trust­ing that it would pen­etrate be­neath the op­po­site shoul­der. The re­coil of the “Ba­by,” load­ed with ten drams of the strongest pow­der and a half-​pound shell, spun me round like a top. It was dif­fi­cult to say which was stag­gered the more severe­ly, the ele­phant or my­self. How­ev­er, we both re­cov­ered, and I seized one of my dou­ble ri­fles, a Reil­ly No. 10, that was quick­ly pushed in­to my hand by my Tokroori, Had­ji Ali. This was done just in time, as an ele­phant from the bat­tled herd turned sharp round, and, with its im­mense ears cocked, charged down up­on us with a scream of rage. “One of us she must have if I miss!”

This was the first down­right charge of an African ele­phant that I had seen, and in­stinc­tive­ly I fol­lowed my old Cey­lon plan of wait­ing for a close shot. She low­ered her head when with­in about six yards, and I fired low for the cen­tre of the fore­head, ex­act­ly in the swelling above the root of the trunk. She col­lapsed to the shot, and fell dead, with a heavy shock, up­on the ground. At the same mo­ment the thorny bar­ri­er gave way be­fore the pres­sure of the herd, and the ele­phants dis­ap­peared in the thick jun­gle, through which it was im­pos­si­ble to fol­low them.

I had suf­fered ter­ri­bly from the hooked thorns, and the men had like­wise. This had been a cap­ital tri­al for my Tokrooris, who had be­haved re­mark­ably well, and had gained much con­fi­dence by my suc­cess­ful fore­head-​shot at the ele­phant when in full charge; but I must con­fess that this is the on­ly in­stance in which I have suc­ceed­ed in killing an African ele­phant by the front shot, al­though I have steadi­ly tried the ex­per­iment up­on sub­se­quent oc­ca­sions.

We had very lit­tle time to ex­am­ine the ele­phant, as we were far from home and the sun was al­ready low. I felt con­vinced that the oth­er ele­phant could not be far off, af­ter hav­ing re­ceived the “Ba­by’s” half-​pound shell care­ful­ly di­rect­ed, and I re­solved to re­turn on the fol­low­ing morn­ing with many peo­ple and camels to di­vide the flesh. It was dark by the time we ar­rived at the tents, and the news im­me­di­ate­ly spread through the Arab camp that two ele­phants had been killed.

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing we start­ed, and up­on ar­rival at the dead ele­phant we fol­lowed the tracks of that wound­ed by the “Ba­by.” The blood up­on the bush­es guid­ed us in a few min­utes to the spot where the ele­phant lay dead, at about three hun­dred yards’ dis­tance. The whole day passed in flay­ing the two an­imals and cut­ting off the flesh, which was packed in large gum sacks, with which the camels were load­ed. I was cu­ri­ous to ex­am­ine the ef­fect of the half-​pound shell. It had en­tered the flank on the right side, break­ing the rib up­on which it had ex­plod­ed; it had then passed through the stom­ach and the low­er por­tion of the lungs, both of which were ter­ri­bly shat­tered; and break­ing one of the fore-​ribs on the left side, it had lodged be­neath the skin of the shoul­der. This was ir­re­sistible work, and the ele­phant had ev­ident­ly dropped in a few min­utes af­ter hav­ing re­ceived the shell.

A most in­ter­est­ing fact had oc­curred. I no­ticed an old wound un­healed and full of mat­ter in the front of the left shoul­der. The bow­els were shot through, and were green in var­ious places. Flo­ri­an sug­gest­ed that it must be an ele­phant that I had wound­ed at Wat el Ne­gur; we tracked the course of the bul­let most care­ful­ly, un­til we at length dis­cov­ered my un­mis­tak­able bul­let of quick­sil­ver and lead, al­most un­in­jured, in the fleshy part of the thigh, imbed­ded in an un­healed wound. Thus, by a cu­ri­ous chance, up­on my first in­ter­view with African ele­phants by day­light, I had killed the iden­ti­cal ele­phant that I had wound­ed at Wat el Ne­gur forty-​three days be­fore in the dhur­ra plan­ta­tion, twen­ty-​eight miles dis­tant!