by Jay Cassell
We still needed a cow for the museum; and a couple of days later, at noon, a party of natives brought in word that they had seen two cows in a spot five miles away. Piloted by a naked spearman, whose hair was done into a cue, we rode toward the place. For most of the distance we followed old elephant trails, in some places mere tracks beaten down through stiff grass which stood above the head of a man on horseback, in other places paths rutted deep into the earth. We crossed a river, where monkeys chattered among the tree tops. On an open plain we saw a rhinoceros cow trotting off with her calf. At last we came to a hill-top with, on the summit, a noble fig-tree, whose giant limbs were stretched over the palms that clustered beneath. Here we left our horses and went forward on foot, crossing a palm-fringed stream in a little valley. From the next rise we saw the backs of the elephants as they stood in a slight valley, where the rank grass grew ten or twelve feet high. It was some time before we could see the ivory so as to be sure of exactly what we were shooting. Then the biggest cow began to move slowly forward, and we walked nearly parallel to her, along an elephant trail, until from a slight knoll I got a clear view of her at a distance of eighty yards. As she walked leisurely along, almost broadside to me, I fired the right barrel of the Holland into her head, knocking her flat down with the shock; and when she rose I put a bullet from the left barrel through her heart, again knocking her completely off her feet; and this time she fell permanently. She was a very old cow, and her ivory was rather better than in the average of her sex in this neighborhood, the tusks weighing about eighteen pounds apiece. She had been ravaging the shambas over night—which accounted in part for the natives being so eager to show her to me—and in addition to leaves and grass, her stomach contained quantities of beans. There was a young one—just out of calfhood, and quite able to take care of itself—with her; it ran off as soon as the mother fell.
Early next morning Cuninghame and Heller shifted part of the safari to the stream near where the dead elephant lay, intending to spend the following three days in taking off and preparing the skin. Meanwhile Tarlton, Kermit, and I were to try our luck in a short hunt on the other side of Meru boma, at a little crater lake called Lake Ingouga. We could not get an early start, and reached Meru too late to push on to the lake the same day.
The following morning we marched to the lake in two hours and a half. We spent an hour in crossing a broad tongue of woodland that stretched down from the wonderful mountain forest lying higher on the slopes. The trail was blind in many places because elephant paths of every age continually led along and across it, some of them being much better marked than the trail itself, as it twisted through the sun-flecked shadows underneath the great trees. Then we came out on high downs, covered with tall grass and littered with volcanic stones; and broken by ravines which were choked with dense underbrush. There were high hills, and to the left of the downs, toward Kenia, these were clad in forest. We pitched our tents on a steep cliff overlooking the crater lake—or pond, as it might more properly be called. It was bordered with sedge, and through the waterlilies on its surface we saw the reflection of the new moon after nightfall. Here and there thick forest came down to the brink, and through this, on opposite sides of the pond, deeply worn elephant paths, evidently travelled for ages, wound down to the water.
That evening we hunted for bushbuck, but saw none. While sitting on a hillock at dusk, watching for game, a rhino trotted up to inspect us, with ears cocked forward and tail erect. A rhino always has something comic about it, like a pig, formidable though it at times is. This one carried a poor horn, and therefore we were pleased when at last it trotted off without obliging us to shoot it. We saw new kinds of whydah birds, one with a yellow breast, one with white in its tail; at this altitude the cocks were still in full plumage, although it was just past the middle of September; whereas at Naivasha they had begun to lose their long tail feathers nearly two months previously.
On returning to camp we received a note from Cuninghame saying that Heller had been taken seriously sick, and Tarlton had to go to them. This left Kermit and me to take our two days’ hunt together.
One day we got nothing. We saw game on the open downs, but it was too wary, and though we got within twenty-five yards of eland in thick cover, we could only make out a cow, and she took fright and ran without our ever getting a glimpse of the bull that was with her. Late in the afternoon we saw an elephant a mile and a half away, crossing a corner of the open downs. We followed its trail until the light grew too dim for shooting, but never overtook it, although at the last we could hear it ahead of us breaking the branches; and we made our way back to camp through the darkness.
The other day made amends. It was Kermit’s turn to shoot an elephant, and mine to shoot a rhinoceros; and each of us was to act as the backing gun for the other. In the forenoon, we saw a bull rhino with a good horn walking over the open downs. A convenient hill enabled us to cut him off without difficulty, and from its summit we killed him at the base, fifty or sixty yards off. His front horn was nearly twenty-nine inches long; but though he was an old bull, his total length, from tip of nose to tip of tail, was only twelve feet, and he was, I should guess, not more than two-thirds the bulk of the big bull I killed in the Sotik.
We rested for an hour or two at noon, under the shade of a very old tree with glossy leaves, and orchids growing on its gnarled, hoary limbs, while the unsaddled horses grazed, and the gun-bearers slept near by, the cool mountain air, though this was midday under the equator, making them prefer the sunlight to the shade. When we moved on it was through a sea of bush ten or fifteen feet high, dotted here and there with trees; and riddled in every direction by the trails of elephant, rhinoceros, and buffalo. Each of these animals frequents certain kinds of country to which the other two rarely or never penetrate; but here they all three found ground to their liking. Except along their winding trails, which were tunnels where the jungle was tall, it would have been practically impossible to traverse the thick and matted cover in which they had made their abode.
We could not tell what moment we might find ourselves face to face with some big beast at such close quarters as to insure a charge, and we moved in cautious silence, our rifles in our hands. Rhinoceros were especially plentiful, and we continually came across not only their tracks, but the dusty wallows in which they rolled, and where they came to deposit their dung. The fresh sign of elephant, however, distracted our attention from the lesser game, and we followed the big footprints eagerly, now losing the trail, now finding it again. At last near a clump of big trees we caught sight of three huge, dark bodies ahead of us. The wind was right, and we stole toward them, Kermit leading, and I immediately behind. Through the tangled branches their shapes loomed in vague outline; but we saw that one had a pair of long tusks, and our gun-bearers unanimously pronounced it a big bull, with good ivory. A few more steps gave Kermit a chance at its head, at about sixty yards, and with a bullet from his .405 Winchester he floored the mighty beast. I rose, and we both fired in unison, bringing it down again; but as we came up it struggled to get on its feet, roaring savagely, and once more we both fired together. This finished it. We were disappointed at finding that it was not a bull; but it was a large cow, with tusks over five feet long—a very unusual length for a cow—one weighing twenty-five, and the other twenty-two pounds.
Our experience had convinced us that both the Winchester .405, and the Springfield .300 would do good work with elephants; although I kept to my belief that, for such very heavy game, my Holland .500-.450 was an even better weapon.
Not far from where this elephant fell Tarlton had, the year before, witnessed an interesting incident. He was watching a small herd of elephants, cows and calves, which were in the open, when he saw them begin to grow uneasy. Then, with a shrill trumpet, a cow approached a bush, out of which bounded a big lion. Instantly all the cows charged him, and he fled as fast as his legs could carry him for the forest, two hundred yards distant. He just managed to reach the cover in safety; and
then the infuriated cows, in their anger at his escape, demolished the forest for several rods in every direction.
PART II
The Olden Days
Phineas Finn
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
The Willingford Bull
Phineas left London by a night mail train on Easter Sunday, and found himself at the Willingford Bull about half an hour after midnight. Lord Chiltern was up and waiting for him, and supper was on the table. The Willingford Bull was an English inn of the old stamp, which had now, in these latter years of railway travelling, ceased to have a road business—for there were no travellers on the road, and but little posting—but had acquired a new trade as a Modern: adepot for hunters and hunting men. The landlord let out horses and kept hunting stables, and the house was generally filled from the beginning of November till the middle of April. Then it became a desert in the summer, and no guests were seen there, till the pink coats flocked down again into the shires.
‘How many days do you mean to give us?’ said Lord Chiltern, as he helped his friend to a devilled leg of turkey.
‘I must go back on Wednesday,’ said Phineas.
‘That means Wednesday night. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ve the Cottesmore to-morrow. We’ll get into Tailby’s country on Tuesday, and Fitzwilliam will be only twelve miles off on Wednesday. We shall be rather short of horses.’
‘Pray don’t let me put you out. I can hire something here, I suppose?’
‘You won’t put me out at all. There’ll be three between us each day, and we’ll run our luck. The horses have gone on to Empingham for to-morrow. Tailby is rather a way off—at Somerby; but we’ll manage it. If the worst comes to the worst, we can get back to Stamford by rail. On Wednesday we shall have everything very comfortable. They’re out beyond Stilton and will draw home our way. I’ve planned it all out. I’ve a trap with a fast stepper, and if we start to-morrow at half-past nine, we shall be in plenty of time. You shall ride Meg Merrilies, and if she don’t carry you, you may shoot her.’
‘Is she one of the pulling ones?’
‘She is heavy in hand if you are heavy at her, but leave her mouth alone and she’ll go like flowing water. You’d better not ride more in a crowd than you can help. Now what’ll you drink?’
They sat up half the night smoking and talking, and Phineas learned more about Lord Chiltern then than ever he had learned before. There was brandy and water before them, but neither of them drank. Lord Chiltern, indeed, had a pint of beer by his side from which he sipped occasionally. ‘I’ve taken to beer,’he said, ‘as being the best drink going. When a man hunts six days a week he can afford to drink beer. I’m on an allowance—three pints a day. That’s not too much.’
‘And you drink nothing else?’
‘Nothing when I’m alone—except a little cherry-brandy when I’m out. I never cared for drink—never in my life. I do like excitement, and have been less careful than I ought to have been as to what it has come from. I could give up drink to-morrow, without a struggle—if it were worth my while to make up my mind to do it. And it’s the same with gambling. I never do gamble now, because I’ve got no money; but I own I like it better than anything in the world. While you are at it, there is life in it.’
‘You should take to politics, Chiltern.’
‘And I would have done so, but my father would not help me. Never mind, we will not talk about him. How does Laura get on with her husband?’
‘Very happily, I should say.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Lord Chiltern. ‘Her temper is too much like mine to allow her to be happy with such a log of wood as Robert Kennedy. It is such men as he who drive me out of the pale of decent life. If that is decency, I’d sooner be indecent. You mark my words. They’ll come to grief. She’ll never be able to stand it.’
‘I should think she had her own way in everything,’ said Phineas.
‘No, no. Though he’s a prig, he’s a man; and she will not find it easy to drive him.’
‘But she may bend him.’
‘Not an inch—that is if I understand his character. I suppose you see a good deal of them?’
‘Yes—pretty well. I’m not there so often as I used to be in the Square.’
‘You get sick of it, I suppose. I should. Do you see my father often?’
‘Only occasionally. He is always very civil when I do see him.’
‘He is the very pink of civility when he pleases, but the most unjust man I ever met.’
‘I should not have thought that.’
‘Yes, he is,’ said the Earl’s son, and all from lack of judgment to discern the truth. He makes up his mind to a thing on insufficient proof, and then nothing will turn him. He thinks well of you—would probably believe your word on any indifferent subject without thought of a doubt; but if you were to tell him that I didn’t get drunk every night of my life and spend most of my time in thrashing policemen, he would not believe you. He would smile incredulously and make you a little bow. I can see him do it.’
‘You are too hard on him, Chiltern.’
‘He has been too hard on me, I know. Is Violet Effingham still in Grosvenor Place?’
‘No; she’s with Lady Baldock.’
‘That old grandmother of evil has come to town—has she? Poor Violet! When we were young together we used to have such fun about that old woman.’
‘The old woman is an ally of mine now,’ said Phineas.
‘You make allies everywhere. You know Violet Effingham of course?’
‘Oh yes. I know her.’
‘Don’t you think her very charming?’ said Lord Chiltern.
‘Exceedingly charming.’
‘I have asked that girl to marry me three times, and I shall never ask her again. There is a point beyond which a man shouldn’t go. There are many reasons why it would be a good marriage. In the first place, her money would be serviceable. Then it would heal matters in our family, for my father is as prejudiced in her favour as he is against me. And I love her dearly. I’ve loved her all my life—since I used to buy cakes for her. But I shall never ask her again.’
‘I would if I were you,’ said Phineas—hardly knowing what it might be best for him to say.
‘No; I never will. But I’ll tell you what. I shall get into some desperate scrape about her. Of course she’ll marry, and that soon. Then I shall make a fool of myself. When I hear that she is engaged I shall go and quarrel with the man, and kick him—or get kicked. All the world will turn against me, and I shall be called a wild beast.’
‘A dog in the manger is what you should be called.’
‘Exactly—but how is a man to help it? If you loved a girl, could you see another man take her?’ Phineas remembered of course that he had lately come through this ordeal. ‘It is as though he were to come and put his hand upon me, and wanted my own heart out of me. Though I have no property in her at all, no right to her—though she never gave me a word of encouragement, it is as though she were the most private thing in the world to me. I should be half mad, and in my madness I could not master the idea that I was being robbed. I should resent it as a personal interference.’
‘I suppose it will come to that if you give her up yourself,’ said Phineas.
‘It is no question of giving up. Of course I cannot make her marry me. Light another cigar, old fellow.’
Phineas, as he lit the other cigar, remembered that he owed a certain duty in this matter to Lady Laura. She had commissioned him to persuade her brother that his suit with Violet Effingham would not be hopeless, if he could only restrain himself in his mode of conducting it. Phineas was disposed to do his duty, although he felt it to be very hard that he should be called upon to be eloquent against his own interest. He had been thinking for the last quarter of an hour how he must bear himself if it might turn out that he should be the man whom Lord Chiltern was resolved to kick. He looked at his friend and host, and became aware that a kicking-match with such a one would not be pleasan
t pastime. Nevertheless, he would be happy enough to be subject to Lord Chiltern’s wrath for such a reason. He would do his duty by Lord Chiltern; and then, when that had been adequately done, he would, if occasion served, fight a battle for himself.
‘You are too sudden with her, Chiltern,’ he said, after a pause.
‘What do you mean by too sudden?’ said Lord Chiltern, almost angrily.
‘You frighten her by being so impetuous. You rush at her as though you wanted to conquer her by a single blow.’
‘So I do.’
‘You should be more gentle with her. You should give her time to find out whether she likes you or not.’
‘She has known me all her life, and has found that out long ago. Not but what you are right. I know you are right. If I were you, and had your skill in pleasing, I should drop soft words into her ear till I had caught her. But I have no gifts in that way. I am as awkward as a pig at what is called flirting. And I have an accursed pride which stands in my own light. If she were in this house this moment, and if I knew she were to be had for asking, I don’t think I could bring myself to ask again. But we’ll go to bed. It’s half-past two, and we must be off at half-past nine, if we’re to be at Exton Park gates at eleven.’
Phineas, as he went up-stairs, assured himself that he had done his duty. If there ever should come to be anything between him and Violet Effingham, Lord Chiltern might quarrel with him—might probably attempt that kicking encounter to which allusion had been made—but nobody could justly say that he had not behaved honourably to his friend.
On the next morning there was a bustle and a scurry, as there always is on such occasions, and the two men got off about ten minutes after time. But Lord Chiltern drove hard, and they reached the meet before the master had moved off. They had a fair day’s sport with the Cottesmore; and Phineas, though he found that Meg Merrilies did require a good deal of riding, went through his day’s work with credit. He had been riding since he was a child, as is the custom with all boys in Munster, and had an Irishman’s natural aptitude for jumping. When they got back to the Willingford Bull he felt pleased with the day and rather proud of himself. ‘It wasn’t fast, you know,’ said Chiltern, ‘and I don’t call that a stiff country. Besides, Meg is very handy when you’ve got her out of the crowd. You shall ride Bonebreaker to-morrow at Somerby, and you’ll find that better fun.’
