CHAPTER VII BILL
He is a little Kikuyu thirteen years old who has attached himself to our safari; a useful little beggar, always finds something to busy himself with; better take him with you. We call him Bill. "Come here, Bill."
Bill came up—a little, naked, thirteen-year-old "Kuke" with great black eyes. The eyes did it. Mrs. Akeley decided that Bill should go with us. He was given a khaki suit two sizes too big for him which made the black eyes sparkle. He was made the assistant of Alli, Mrs. Akeley's tent boy, and his training as tent boy began.
In six months Bill had become a full-fledged tent boy, with plenty of time always at his disposal to mix up with almost everything going on in camp. I think of him now, after three expeditions in which he has been with me, as the best tent boy, the best gun-bearer, the best tracker, and the best headman that it has ever been my lot to know—a man who, I know, would go into practically certain death to serve me. If I were starting out on an expedition among unknown people in Africa I would rather have Bill as a headman and as a counselor in dealing with the savages, even though they were people of whom Bill knew nothing, than any one I know of.
During that first six months' apprenticeship Bill was always busy. When there was nothing to do about camp he would borrow some of Heller's traps and set them for jackals, or he would be poking about the bush looking for lizards or snakes that we might want for the collections. Months passed, and Bill was an inconspicuous member of our little army of followers. We were camped on the top of the Aberdare; Cuninghame and I were returning from a fruitless four days on elephant trails. As we neared camp we saw Mrs. Akeley come out on the road ahead of us, with Alli acting as gun-bearer. An elephant had passed a few hundred yards from camp and she had come out to the road in the hope of getting a shot as it crossed. A little farther on toward camp we met Bill, stripped to the waist, carrying my 8 mm. rifle and a pocket of 6 mm. cartridges. If there was anything doing Bill had to be in it.
A few weeks later on, our wanderings took us into Kikuyu country and near to Bill's native village. He sent for his "mamma," to whom he wanted to give some of his earnings. So his mother came to camp and Bill introduced her. He led me out to where she was leaning against a rock, and pointing to her said, "mamma." She was a young shenzie woman of the usual type, dressed in a leather skirt and bead and brass ornaments.
One day Bill had the sulks and was scolded for not doing something that he had been told to do. He said he knew his work and didn't have to be told what to do. It made him perfectly furious to be continually told to do things which he knew to be a part of his duties. Nor would he shirk his duties. If he failed to do things at the proper time, in nine cases out of ten it was because someone had been telling him to do the things and it had made him ugly. This characteristic is as pronounced now as ever, and has been the cause of the most of poor Bill's troubles.
At last our work was over and we returned to Nairobi to prepare for our departure from Africa. As soon as we arrived Bill demanded his pay. We wanted him to stay until we were ready to leave Nairobi, but no, he wanted to be free to spend his money; so he left us in spite of the fact that in doing so he sacrificed his backsheesh. He promptly spent all his money for clothes, having them made to order by the Indian traders, but within two weeks he had lost all the clothes in gambling. Thus ended Bill's first year's career as a tent boy.
Four years later we returned to East Africa. Several months previously, Alli and Bill had been engaged for the Roosevelt Expedition, but before we reached there Bill had disgraced himself, and had been turned out and black-listed. But knowing something of the probable conditions which had contributed to his downfall, we were glad to get him and he was glad to come. There were four of our party, and most of the other tent boys and the kitchen contingent were Swahilis, so we rather expected that Bill would have trouble. But his first real trouble came of an exaggerated sense of loyalty to me, or at least that was his excuse. During my absence from camp one of my companions asked Bill for some supplies from a box to which Bill had the keys, but he refused to get them, saying that he must have an order from his own Bwana. It was cheek, and he had to be punished; the punishment was not severe, but coming from me it went hard with him and I had to give him a fatherly talk to prevent his running away. Whenever we reached a boma, or Nairobi, we expected Bill to have a grouch. His irresistible impulse to spend money and the desire to keep it, too, upset him, and going to Nairobi usually meant that he would be paid in full and discharged; but the next day he would turn up and continue to do his work with a long face until he would manage to screw up courage to ask if the Bwana would take him on the next trip, and then he would be all grins and the troubles were over.
Sometimes in hunting dangerous game I would take him along as extra gun-bearer and usually on these occasions his marvellous keenness of eye and ability to track would result in the regular gun-bearers being relegated to the rear. One time while hunting elephants in Uganda I let him go with me. We had finished inspecting a small herd, decided there was nothing in it that I wanted, and were going back to take up the trail of another lot in a section where the country was all trodden down by the going and coming of numerous herds. As we went along Bill detected the spoor of two big bulls and I told him to follow it, not thinking for a moment that he would be able to hold it in the maze of herd tracks. On our last visit to town he had invested in a stiff brim straw hat and a cane, and he looked like anything but an elephant tracker as he walked jauntily along with his straw hat on the back of his head and swinging his cane like a dandy. For five hours he followed that trail with the utmost nonchalance, in places where it would have given the professional tracker the greatest trouble and where nine out of ten would have lost it. At last, as it led us through a dense bush, Bill suddenly stopped and held up his cane as a signal for caution; as I drew up to him there were two old bulls not twenty feet from us. When one of them was dead and the other gone I felt much more comfortable than when I first realized the situation into which we had blundered.
But the time that Bill earned our everlasting gratitude and immunity from punishment for present misdeeds was when I was smashed up by the elephant on Mt. Kenia. He was with Mrs. Akeley at the base camp when the news reached her at dusk, and it was past midnight when she was ready to come to me through that awful twenty miles of forest and jungle in the blackness of a drenching rain. While headman and askaris were helpless, stupidly sharing the fear and dread of the forest at night which paralyzed the porters and guides, it was Bill with a big stick who put them in motion and literally drove them ahead of Mrs. Akeley to me. And then it was he who directed the cutting of the road out of the forest for the passage of my stretcher, enlisting the services of a chief with his people to cut a road in from the shambas to meet our porters who were working outward.
One day when I was convalescing, Bill called on a porter to perform some service about my tent. The porter refused to come. Bill went out to "interview" him. The porter was twice as large as Bill—there was a little scuffle, and Bill came right back and did the work himself. Then he went over to the doctor's tent and conducted him out to where he had left the porter. It took the doctor a half hour to bring the porter to. Then the other porters came up in a body and said that Bill must go or they would all go. I told them that the first of their number who complained of Bill or refused to do his bidding would get "twenty-five." The average black boy would have taken advantage of the situation created by these victories—not so with Bill. After that, whenever he had occasion to pass an order to a porter, he always did it through the headman.
Perhaps I should explain at this point just what the normal personnel of a safari in British East Africa is. First, there is the headman, who is supposed to be in charge of the whole show, excepting the gun-bearers and tent boys, who are the personal servants and under the immediate direction of their masters. The askaris are soldiers who are armed and whose duties consist of the guarding of the camp at night and looking after the porters on the march. There is one askari to from ten to twenty porters. The cook and his assistant or assistants, the number of whom is determined by the size of the party, are important members of the safari. Then there are tent boys, one to each member of the party, whose duty is to look after the tents and clothing, and to serve their masters or mistresses at table. The syces are pony boys, whose duties are to look after the horses and equipment. In addition to those already named come the rank and file of porters whose duties are manifold, carrying loads on the march, gathering wood under the direction of the askaris and the cook, bringing in game, beating for lions, setting up the tents under the direction of the tent boys, and so forth.
I do not know of any case where Bill's character was better demonstrated than at the time when I was convalescent after the elephant smashed me up. I was able to walk about, but had to have someone carry a chair along so that I could sit down to rest. A little distance away from camp, at the edge of the Kenia forest, there was a great swampy place surrounded on three sides by a high ridge and on the fourth side by the forest. One day the natives came in and reported that an old bull elephant had come out into this swampy place, and they said that he would probably stay in there for a week or ten days. These old lone bulls come out into one of these feeding grounds, where they are not likely to be disturbed by their companions, and for a time simply loaf around and feed and then go away again. We started out one morning to look this one up, and went to the edge of the forest, where the boys showed us his trail. We followed it, and found that it was joined by the fresh trail of a second elephant. I started to walk down the trail, but found that I was not in physical condition to go on, so I sent the boys up and around the ridge of this crater-like depression, instructing them to throw stones into the bush as they went along. They had not gone far when one of the elephants was beaten out and started to go across the bottom of the crater, over open ground. He was probably three hundred yards away from me, and as he approached the forest on the other side it occurred to me that I might get him rattled by shooting into the trees ahead of him. So I shot—the bullets crashed through the trees in front and frightened him, and he wheeled around and started back. I had hoped that he would come my way, but he did not. In the intense excitement I shot at him three or four times. A little puff of dust from his dry hide told me the story of my aim, and while one or two of the bullets apparently struck in the right place, it was evident that there was not sufficient penetration to get results.
The whole thing was very foolish, but since I had wounded him it was absolutely essential that I finish the job. The elephant turned again and went on across to the opposite side, and now I had to get on his trail and follow him. From a hundred yards away he got our wind momentarily, and threatened to charge. Another shot turned him, and he disappeared into the bush. An hour later I had a good view of him at about seventy-five yards and under conditions where I normally could have made an approach to within a distance from which I might have dropped him in his tracks. But at this point I was so exhausted that I took a final shot at him from where I stood, seventy-five yards away. He went down, but got to his feet again and went into the bush. The boys helped me back into camp. I felt perfectly certain that we would find him dead in the morning. The whole thing had been stupid and unsportsmanlike.
The next morning, with a few of the boys, I went back and took up his trail; but much to my disappointment and surprise I found that he and his companion had kept right on into the forest and were apparently going strong. I knew that he was mortally wounded, and it was necessary that he should be followed and finished off. It was too big a job for me in my condition, so it was up to Bill. I gave Bill one of my gun-bearers and each of them a heavy .470 cordite rifle, with instructions to stick to the trail until they found the elephant. They were not to shoot except in emergency. When the elephant was found, one of them was to remain with it while the other came back to report.
I went back to camp and waited. The boys had no supply of food with them and I had no idea but that they would be back in camp before night, but it was not until midnight of the second day that Bill came to my tent, awakened me, and told his story. They had followed the elephant without ever coming up with him except that at one time they heard him ahead of them; and they had finally decided it was best to come back to get food and instructions. Bill was just about exhausted; and the gun-bearer, a big husky fellow, had fallen by the wayside. Bill had left him some five miles back in the forest on the trail. Evidently Bill considered my elephant guns of more importance than one black gun boy, as, for fear that something would happen to the rifles, he had lugged both of the heavy guns into camp, leaving the boy with nothing but his knife with which to protect himself. I felt, however, that there was little danger to the gun boy except from exposure, and against that he no doubt had built a fire. I could think of nothing to do until daylight. A half hour later some commotion in camp caused me to send for the headman, but Bill came instead. I asked him what was doing, and he said that he had had trouble in getting some of the boys to go with him. "Go where?" I asked. He replied that he was going back to the gun boy with food. Then I came to. I sent for the headman and askaris, told Bill to describe to them the gun boy's location, and told them they were to go to his relief, and Bill that he was to go to bed. This he finally did, after using up what remaining strength he had in protest. The elephant was not located.
About a year and a half later, after we had returned to the States, Bill went back into his home country and began to search for the wounded elephant. He must have done some very clever detective work, for he finally located the native who had found the dead elephant. This native had secured the tusks, and had sold one of them to an Indian trader; but the second was still in his possession. According to the laws of the land he should have turned in the two tusks to the government officials, who would have paid him a nominal price for the ivory, and I, having filed a claim with the Government, would have come into possession of the tusks; but the native had evidently thought that he could get more out of them by selling them one at a time, and had taken a chance. But he made a mistake in leaving Bill out of his calculations. Bill followed up the case with the final result that the remaining tusk was taken and sent to me, and the Government confiscated a certain number of cattle belonging to the native as penalty for the one he had sold. Thus, to both Bill and me, the final results from that particular elephant hunt were satisfactory.
One time in Uganda I was using Bill as a gun-bearer in preference to the regular gun-bearers, because I had by that time realized that Bill was the best tracker as well as the most keen and alert hunter, black or white, that I had ever known. We had followed a small band of elephants into some dense forest, and for a long time had been crouching beneath some undergrowth where we could get an occasional glimpse of the elephants' legs, but nothing more. They had been quietly feeding during this time, but at last they moved away and crossed a trail down which we had a vista of a hundred yards or so. When we thought the last one had passed, we went down this trail quickly and quietly to the point where they had crossed, and there we stopped, listening intently in an attempt to locate them. At first I thought they had gone out of hearing, when I suddenly discovered the rear elevation of a bull not more than twenty feet from us. He was motionless. We had come in so quietly that he had not heard us, and then I did not dare move for fear of attracting his attention. I craned my neck in an effort to get a glimpse of his tusks, and in doing this I became conscious of a cow standing beside the bull and looking straight at us. Bill was about five feet back and to one side of me. I stood motionless, without swinging my gun in the cow's direction, but waited for her to make the move. I doubt whether she saw us distinctly. The bull began to move away and the cow, in turning to follow, moved a pace more or less in my direction. I was perfectly certain that she was going to follow the bull, and to Bill there was no indication that I had seen her. Bill thought she was coming at me, raised his gun, and fired point blank into the cow's face. The elephants bolted. I wheeled and slapped Bill, because he had broken one of the rules of the game, which is that a black boy must never shoot without orders unless his master is down and at the mercy of a beast. Of course it did not take long for me to come to a realization that Bill's shooting was done in perfectly good faith because he thought that I had not seen the cow, and he also thought that she was coming straight at me. Bill's heart was broken and my apologies were forthcoming and were as humble as the dignity of a white man would permit.
The next day Bill came to me and said that he wanted to quit and go back to Nairobi. I satisfied myself that it was not the incident of the day before that had brought him to this frame of mind, but he admitted that he was scared and tired. In other words, the pace had been too hot for him. It was a case of nerves, and he was worn out. I persuaded him to stay, telling him that he need not go with me on elephant trails for a week. I would take the other boys and he could just stay in camp to loaf and rest. But the next morning, when I was preparing to go, Bill was on the job and would not be left behind. He told Mrs. Akeley that he was not afraid for himself but was afraid for his Bwana. So we continued our elephant work at an easier pace than before.
The Wakikuyus (to give them their full name) are an agricultural people, and one does not normally look among them for gun-bearers or hunters. They are a comparatively mild and gentle race, and thus Bill was quite an exceptional individual. Bill was always on the job, and if it were not for the two occasions of which I have told, I would be able to say that he is one human being whom I have never seen tired.
Bill never was and never will be completely tamed. His loyalty to the master in whom he believes and for whom he has an affection is unbounded, and I firmly believe that Bill would go into certain death for such a master. He has an independence that frequently gets him into trouble. He does not like to take orders from any one of his own colour. The Somalis and the Swahilis, associated with Bill, were constantly putting up jobs to get him in bad with the master because, to these two peoples, the Wakikuyus are a very inferior race. There is no doubt in my mind that Bill's disgrace with the Roosevelt Expedition was due entirely to the connivance of the Swahilis and the Somalis.
When we had finished with our lion-spearing expedition on the Uasin Gishu Plateau, numerous things had been stolen, and the Somalis insisted that Bill was the guilty party. A white man whom I had employed to take charge of the Nandi spearmen was not fond of Bill, and one day he ordered him to open his bag for inspection. Bill refused, and when the case was brought to me and I investigated it, Bill was so rebellious that we found it necessary to take him in hand for mild punishment. He ran from camp and I sent an askari after him. The askari overtook him, but he did not bring him back, because Bill had a long knife and he was prepared to use it to a finish. I realized that I would have to see it through, although my sympathies were all with Bill. We were near a government boma, and I turned my case over to the officials. Bill was arrested, put in jail, and we went on without him.
Some weeks later we were making the ascent of Mt. Kenia, back in Bill's old country, where Bill's services had been almost invaluable; and I continually felt the need and frequently an actual longing for Bill. We were up about ten thousand feet on Kenia, following an elephant trail. We came to an elephant pit in which some animal had been trapped and made its escape. I was busy reading the story, which was very simple. A giant hog had got into the pit and had worked with his tusks and feet at the sides of his prison until he had raised the bottom to a point which enabled him to scramble out and make his escape. I had been longing for Bill all morning because of certain troubles we were having with our boys. Just as we were about to leave the pit to continue our march up the mountain side I heard a voice behind me:
"Jambo, Bwana." ["Good morning, Master.">[
I recognized Bill's voice. I turned and saw the most disreputable Bill that I had ever seen. His clothing was worn to shreds, his shoes were practically all gone, and the only thing about him that was perfectly all right was his grin. I wanted to hug him. I never knew just what happened at the boma except that after two weeks Bill got out, took up our trail, and followed us in all of our meanderings, and finally came up with us at the elephant pit in the gloomy bamboo forest. He had probably travelled a couple of hundred miles in overtaking us.
Bill's training as a tent boy, as I have said, was under Alli. Alli was a Swahili, and he was not only one of the most efficient tent boys and all-around men that we ever had in Africa, but he was especially valuable on safari because of his ability to entertain and amuse his fellow men around the campfire at night. Alli's sense of the dramatic was extremely keen. Night after night he would stand in the centre of a circle of admirers, telling them stories. We would often sit and watch him, and we had no difficulty in following his story, though we understood, at that time, no Swahili at all. He might perhaps be describing to his fellows some white man. He would describe his dress in detail—his tie, his shirt, his cuffs—and we were usually able to recognize the individual from the pantomime of his description. These stories were sometimes made up from the day's experience. For instance, it might be that during the day I had had some interesting experience or adventure the story of which Alli had gathered from the gun boys on their return, and when the work was finished in the evening Alli would give it to his audience in full detail—probably with some additions that furnished intense interest—often eliciting loud applause.
One time we had been on an elephant trail a day and a half. I lay beneath a tree, "all in" with spirillum fever, and felt that I could go no farther that day; so I ordered Bill to make camp. I was awakened from a doze by Bill, and when I asked him if my tent was ready he replied that it was not but that the hammock was. He had improvised a hammock which he ordered me to get into. He had doubled up the loads of the few porters so that four were released to carry me. Bill made the porters trot the ten miles to camp. It was nearly a month before Bill and I had recovered sufficiently to take up the elephant trails again.
Another time I was down with black-water fever in the Nairobi hospital. I had been booked to "go over the Divide" the night before, but somehow missed connections. I opened my eyes with my face to a window overlooking the porch, and there, looking over the rail, was Bill, like a faithful dog. It seemed to me that he stood there for hours with tears in his eyes staring at his master. A few days later he was allowed to come into my room. He approached the foot of the bed with a low "Jambo, Bwana."
I said, "It is all right, Bill; I'll soon be well."
With a great gulping sob, he burst into tears and bolted from the room.
At an African Big Game Dinner in New York almost ten years after I left Bill, one of my friends who had just returned from British East Africa came to me and announced that he knew all about me now, that he had had Bill in his safari, and Bill never lost an opportunity to tell him stories about Bwana Akeley. So I know that Bill is still loyal, and there is no one in all Africa whom I am more keen to see. I missed him constantly on my trip into the gorilla country, but because I entered Africa from the south when I headed for Kivu, I was forced to make up my safari without him.