In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

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.