Killers and Their Prey

I

COMPANIONS OF THE NIGHT

I

A LION came to live in the donga at the end of Hubbard’s vegetable shamba. Hubbard was annoyed. He had nothing against lions as a class—in fact, he rather approved of them; but this one, so bold and even arrogant in his deportment, was a source of embarrassment to a man who was trying to make a living from stock farming. The cattle boma was not far from the beast’s lair, and though it had not included beef in its diet so far, it was to be expected that the smell of so much succulent food in the vicinity would prove irresistible to the carnivore upon the first occasion when his nightly excursion on to the plains was unrewarded by the capture of a fat zebra.

To Hubbard the position presented unusual difficulties, for he was a man who hated to shed blood. He had seen a lot of it shed during those turbulent years when the smiling country-side of France had been turned into a shambles for the manhood of Europe, and the memory of his experiences in those times had produced in his deep-thinking mind an intolerance of cruelty and unnecessary suffering.

The outcome of these ideas was a four-thousand-acre farm which had more the appearance of a zoological park than the grazing-ground of hundreds of sheep and cattle, tended by noisy natives. The fauna of the district flocked to Hubbard, as the persecuted to a protector of all persecuted things. Hill and valley showed the dazzling stripes of zebra and granti; waterbuck and pallah thronged the copses by the stream; and ostriches wandered unrestrained among the outbuildings, where they snapped up bent nails, the tops of tins, and such glittering objects as attracted their peculiar appetites.

A she-leopard had raised a promising family in a kopje near the stream, and so far only one missing sheep had been traced to the den of this uninvited guest.

‘She was driven to it by hunger,’ Hubbard maintained. ‘She would never have robbed me unless her need had been pressing.’ He deplored the murder, but consoled himself with the knowledge that leopards must live, and not being vegetarians, are forced to seek their meat from God, according to the inscrutable laws which govern these things.

‘She has reared three fine cubs,’ he was wont to exclaim enthusiastically when his neighbours sarcastically inquired after the family; ‘three really bonny cubs, who will soon be after my chickens if I don’t watch out. You see, they are too young to realize that my property is taboo. The old girl knows it well enough, and she would never have taken that sheep if she had not been starving.’

The neighbours shook their heads over this philosophy, but they were forced to admit that Hubbard’s pets appeared singularly reluctant to do him damage. He had lost fewer beasts from the depredations of wild animals than any one in the district, despite the fact that his farm was a sanctuary for half the preyers of the country-side. The fellow was crazy, of course, but it happened that his farm was so well stocked with buck that there was no necessity for schelms to raid his bomas for their dinner. It was easier to catch a kongoni than an ox on Hubbard’s place.

Colonel Burke, who occupied the adjacent holding, pointed out to Hubbard that he could not farm zebra and stock at one and the same time. ‘The first drought will convince you of the fallacy of your conduct, my boy.’

To which Hubbard replied: ‘When there is not enough room for me and my friends on the same piece of land, I shall move.’

But he did not seriously contemplate such a measure. He had weathered several dry seasons, and experience had shown him that it was the game that trekked long before the supply of grazing ran short. He would expound his argument in characteristic fashion, waving a long, bony arm over the immensity of Africa to illustrate his breadth of vision. ‘Did you ever see a lean zebra? There is grass enough for every one, and he knows better than to stay in one spot and starve. We might do worse than copy his example.’

His friends pictured him driving his flocks and herds out over the wilderness of Crown land like a patriarch of old, and wondered what the District Commissioner would have to say about it.

‘I don’t care what he says,’ said Hubbard. ‘I am entitled to the same freedom as a native, surely?’

There was no way of convincing such a man, and his neighbours, in a land where eccentricity of conduct is too common to provoke censure, bore with his fads until such time as the failure of a rainy season should teach him wisdom.

So Hubbard lived in amity with man and beast until the incursion of Leo into his peaceful existence provided him with a problem beyond his philosophy to solve.

II

Herdsmen reported that the beast had taken up his abode in a sandy-floored cave in a big donga; they feared for their charges bedded in such close proximity to the voracious lodger.

‘I cannot have him there, but I will not shoot him,’ thought Hubbard. ‘I must tell him to go.’

It was a foible of his that he possessed the power of communicating his wishes to the brutes by concentration of mind force. One evening he strolled down to the donga to try to catch a glimpse of his new tenant.

The sun had set behind the rim of the mountain range, but there was still a sufficiency of pearl-grey light to make nearby objects easily discernible. Hubbard, lean-faced and quiet, with the restraint of a man who had lived much alone, blended well with the brooding repose of his surroundings. His frayed khaki clothing was of a piece with dusty bush and the sandy earth, on which tufts of withered grass flourished in defiance of all probability; his bearded, bespectacled face was burnt to a hue like the last red flush of the day. It was likely that the wilderness recognized him as part of it, for he had the air of a man content with his environment. He carried no weapon but a raw-hide kiboko, with which he killed snakes when occasion arose.

A buck gazelle raised its head to stare curiously at him as he passed within a few yards of it.

‘You are getting fat, Tommy,’ said Hubbard; ‘you should take more exercise.’

The creature snorted its contempt of this advice and continued to graze, wagging its little black tail with nervous energy. The man smiled and passed on to where the steep wall of the donga cut a winding line across the plain. He calculated that he should be just above the lion’s lair, and his supposition was proved correct by the sight that met his eyes as he topped the bank and looked down into the hollow.

The floor of the dried watercourse was encumbered with distorted thorn scrub and jagged boulders. The lion was lying upon a flat-topped rock, watching the man above him. Some drift of scent had evidently warned him a moment before of the approach of a stranger.

From the top of a fifteen-foot scarp Hubbard surveyed the animal in perfect safety. It was a big lion, the biggest he had ever seen. Tawny mane and more tawny eyes embellished a countenance of great dignity. The shoulders and paws were beautiful in their might, and the lift of the beast’s head was indicative of the unconquerable spirit within him. He had been lying sunning himself until hunting time arrived, and he was still lazily pondering the prospects of his nightly journey.

‘You are a beauty, Leo,’ said Hubbard softly. ‘No wonder man has conceded you the title of monarch of the wild. There may be others stronger and more ferocious, but none so magnificent in his bearing.’

The lion kept his fierce eyes fixed upon him. There was nothing but savagery and a regal hostility in those terrible orbs.

‘You do not like me, Leo? You have good cause to distrust my kind. Yet there is no enmity towards you in my mind. Why do you feel like that? We might be friends, you and I, but for those terrible eyes of yours that were not made to express the softer emotions. I could not live with those eyes about me, Leo; they are red death, lit by the same fires that illumined a sea of mud and horror in days past. Leo, you must go; here is no sanctuary for you.’

The lion raised his head and yawned deeply, exposing a set of milk-white teeth of extraordinary strength. Then he licked his lips once or twice and resumed his contemplation of the man above him.

‘Don’t be impertinent,’ said the man. ‘I am ordering you off my property. I cannot have a beast with eyes like yours living within a few hundred yards of my cattle bomas. Take this as a final notice to quit, and act upon it. You are in great danger here; danger against which all your strength and courage cannot prevail. Go now, while you are safe, and do not return.’

The lion rose slowly to his feet, and Hubbard experienced a shock at the size and power of him; a power which made him feel ridiculous and contemptible by comparison. Leo stepped from his rock and made his way slowly down the donga.

Hubbard walked fast back to the house in the gathering dusk, and before he reached it he heard the ‘Oo—aah! Oo—aah!’ of a mighty voice—the voice of savagery abroad in the night.

III

It was two evenings later that Leo walked into the cattle boma and interrupted the evening milking. Natives and cows went through and over the opposite thorn hedge with one accord, and in a few minutes Hubbard, rifle in hand, was approaching the boma with deadly intent. The lion was lapping milk like a cat from an overturned bucket.

Hubbard replaced his safety-catch and returned to the house. ‘Go and chase him away with stones,’ he ordered. ‘He is only taking a stroll round the property; he means no harm.’

After dinner he sat on the stoep with his coffee, cogitating in the moonlight. Lions had visited him before, but their presence had always been transitory. They had walked across the farm, or killed and eaten their fill, and had then passed on about their business. Leo showed no signs of passing on. His business was right there where the cave in the donga afforded comfortable shelter and the well-stocked veld a satisfactory larder. What was to be done with the animal?

Hubbard’s worries were not confined to the presence of this killer upon his threshold. He had received a disquieting letter from the Commissioner that day. Four Wakamba had caused some trouble in the reserve and had escaped into the settled area, leaving dead men and looted huts behind them. The Commissioner feared that lonely and unprotected settlers might be troubled by these malcontents before they were tracked down and apprehended, and he desired Hubbard to look out for himself.

Hubbard felt capable of taking care of his own person, but he realized his inability to protect the persons of his employees. Living in scattered huts about the farm, his squatters were exposed to violence and robbery at the hands of wayfarers such as these disobedient protégés of an impotent administration. He discovered no means of immunizing this threat to the welfare of his minions, who were as necessary to his own welfare as his own two hands.

It was at this stage of his consideration that he looked up and saw the lion. Leo had materialized out of the night like one of the night’s own shadows. He stood at the foot of the veranda steps, unangry and unafraid, regarding the man with interest and curiosity. Hubbard’s strange sympathy with animals allowed him to perceive that he was in no danger. Leo was inspecting his newly-acquired hunting-ground; he did not estimate man as a rival, and asssuredly he did not count him provender.

When two predatory creatures meet they watch each other interestedly. Leo had no doubt that the man was in the category of killers in which he himself occupied so outstanding a place; the hunter wears a different mien from the hunted. It remained to fathom the destructive power of this two-legged killer and whether he might prove inimical to the lion’s own interests. It was conceivable that they could share this territory between them without prejudice to each other’s welfare.

Hubbard remembered his visitor’s tastes. With unhurried movements he emptied the milk-jug into his saucer, which, with extreme caution, he placed on the top step. Leo’s nostrils dilated understandingly. He was reminded of hospitable members of his own tribe making room at the kill for a newcomer. He had extended this courtesy himself at times. With majestic tread he ascended the first two steps and cleaned the saucer with a couple of sweeps of his enormous tongue.

Hubbard sat in his chair within a yard of the lion, feeling the sweat starting out upon the backs of his hands. It was a terrible but exultant moment. He might be killed in a flash if his judgement were false; but if he lived, it would be to tell of an unparalleled intimacy between an unarmed man and a wild lion. His heart swelled with the pride of achievement, for it was plain that Leo intended him no harm. The lion licked his lips like the cat he was, and heaving himself back to the path, vanished into the night without a backward glance.

Hubbard sat there spellbound. ‘I’ll tame him,’ he muttered. ‘He will come again after this, and next time I’ll have more tasty fare to offer him. He will learn to trust me; perhaps come at my call.’ He was silent, lost in contemplation of the visions his imagination called up—visions in which Leo figured as his friend and protector, the companion of his lonely evenings, the guardian of his moonlight rambles. In a happy reverie he sat there while the moon climbed to the zenith, until, roused by the chill air of midnight, he betook himself to his usual inspection of bomas and outhouses before retiring for the night.

His bedroom opened direct on to the stoep, and he entered the wide glass doors still occupied with plans for the subjugation of the lion.

In the pitch darkness he went down beneath the onslaught of naked bodies, and in a moment was bound and helpless upon the floor.

IV

‘Light the lamp, Wangidi,’ said a voice in the Wakamba tongue, ‘but turn it low down.’

The faint light of the hurricane-lantern showed the four of them, evil-looking ruffians, stripped and armed for desperate deeds.

‘Now, white man, where is your money?’ said the one who had spoken before. ‘Tell us quickly or we will kill you.’

‘There is no money,’ answered Hubbard briefly; ‘but there are askari on your trail, for Bwana Jones knows you are here and has sent men to seize you. Go quickly, before you are caught.’

The native grinned. ‘We will go when we have got what we came for—money and food. Speak now and speak truth.’ He presented the point of a long spear at Hubbard’s breast, and drew back his shoulder suggestively.

‘Oh, fool!’ said Hubbard bitterly. ‘Do you not know that the wazungu keep their money in the Banki? Have you heard no stories of the white man’s power; that he never forgives the murderer of one of his friends, and never lets him escape, even though he were as fleet and cunning as the hyena? Do not kill me, then, for with the blow you will assuredly loose the bolt that shall strike you down.’

‘Nevertheless, I will kill you, for I fear nothing.’

Hubbard closed his eyes in resignation, but a sudden exclamation made him open them again. The four natives stood in various attitudes about the room, but however their bodies were disposed, their heads were turned with rigid intent towards the doorway, for in that doorway, vague and immense in the feeble light of the lamp, showed the form of a full-grown lion.

Leo had returned to fraternize further with his new friend and had followed the beckoning scent into the bedroom. His single ‘Woof!’ of alarm betrayed his disquiet at the presence of the strangers.

It is certain that in the face of this unlooked-for situation the lion would have withdrawn as noiselessly as he had come, but one of the thieves, terror-stricken at this apparition out of the night, raised his bow in an instinctive gesture of defence and loosed the arrow held ready on the string.

The barb struck Leo in the leg, and he reacted to the smart of it as a powder charge reacts to an electric spark.

One terrible roar split the night as he leapt upon his assailant, overturning the lamp in his course, and then a medley of sounds filled the room. Snarling, scrunching noises, and a feeble screaming.

The remaining three natives dashed out of the door, the thud of their flying footsteps and the ‘waugh’ of their distressful breathing diminishing over the veld.

Hubbard rolled frantically upon the floor, his hands, bound close to