CHAPTER I—WE SET OUT FOR SOMALILAND
This weaves itself perforce into my business
King Lear
It is not that I imagine the world is panting for another tale about a shoot. I am aware that of the making of sporting books there is no end. Simply—I want to write. And in this unassuming record of a big shoot, engineered and successfully carried through by two women, there may be something of interest; it is surely worth more than a slight endeavour to engage the even passing interest of one person of average intelligence in these days of universal boredom.
I don’t know whether the idea of our big shoot first emanated from my cousin or myself. I was not exactly a tenderfoot, neither was she. We had both been an expedition to the Rockies at a time when big game there was not so hard to find, but yet less easy to get at. We did not go to the Rockies with the idea of shooting, our sole raison d’être being to show the heathen Chinee how not to cook; but incidentally the charm of the chase captured us, and we exchanged the gridiron for the gun. So at the end of March 190-we planned a sporting trip to Somaliland—very secretly and to ourselves, for women hate being laughed at quite as much as men do, and that is very much indeed.
My cousin is a wonderful shot, and I am by no means a duffer with a rifle. As to our courage—well, we could only trust we had sufficient to carry us through. We felt we had, and with a woman intuition is everything. If she feels she is not going to fail, you may take it from me she won’t. Certainly it is one thing to look a lion in the face from England to gazing at him in Somaliland. But we meant to meet him somehow.
Gradually and very carefully we amassed our stores, and arranged for their meeting us in due course. We collected our kit, medicines, and a thousand and one needful things, and at last felt we had almost everything, and yet as little as possible. Even the little seemed too much as we reflected on the transport difficulty. We sorted our things most carefully—I longed for the floor-space of a cathedral to use as a spreading-out ground—and glued a list of the contents of each packing-case into each lid.
To real sportsmen I shall seem to be leaving the most important point to the last—the rifles, guns, and ammunition. But, you see, I am only a sportswoman by chance, not habit. I know it is the custom with your born sportsman to place his weapons first, minor details last. “Nice customs curtsey to great kings,” they say, and so it must be here. For King Circumstance has made us the possessors of such wondrous modern rifles, &c., as to leave us no reason to think of endeavouring to supply ourselves with better. We, fortunately, have an uncle who is one of the greatest shikaris of his day, and his day has only just passed, his sun but newly set. A terribly bad mauling from a lion set up troubles in his thigh, and blood poisoning finally ended his active career. He will never hunt again, but he placed at our disposal every beautiful and costly weapon he owned, together with his boundless knowledge. He insisted on our taking many things that would otherwise have been left behind, and his great trust in our powers inspired us with confidence. It is to his help we owe the entire success of our expedition.
It would be an impertinence for a tyro like myself to offer any remarks on the merits or demerits of any rifle. Not only do the fashions change almost as quickly as in millinery, not only do great shikaris advise, advertise, and adventure with any weapon that could possibly be of service to anyone, but my knowledge, even after the experience gained in our long shoot, is confined to the very few firearms we had with us. They might not have met with unqualified approval from all men; they certainly served us well. After all, that is the main point.