It was a very pandemonium. The screaming and yelling of the negroes was quite unearthly, and the noise seemed to grow louder and more frightful as their courage increased at not finding any lion to alarm them. Maranzian, with his four men that had guns, was standing about twenty yards in front of me. We were beginning to think that we were again baulked, when, like a flash of lightning, a lioness made a tremendous spring out of its concealment, and then another spring as sudden into the very midst of the excited crowd of hunters. There were so many of them scattered about between me and the angry brute, that it was out of the question to think of firing, and it made a third bound, and disappeared into another thicket close behind; it knocked over several of the men, but fortunately it did not hurt any of them seriously.
Without the loss of a moment, Maranzian sent his men to drive the lioness to the very extremity of her new retreat. It rather surprised us to find the dogs perfectly silent as we followed them into the thicket, but before long we heard them barking vehemently in the open ground beyond; they had driven out the brute, and were in full pursuit.
As he saw the lioness bounding away in the distance, with the dogs at her heels, Cowley was terribly chagrined at having abandoned his former position, and sighed over his lost chance of adding to his rising renown as a lion-hunter.
Page 253.
LION HUNT NEAR SESHEKE.
Only an artist’s pencil could properly depict the scene at this moment. The plain was more than half a mile long, and nearly as wide; bushwood enclosed it on the north, reed-thickets on the south and west; far in front was the fugitive lioness; the dogs were pressing on at various intervals, whilst the frantic crowd of well-nigh 200 negroes was scampering in the rear; nothing could be imagined more motley than their appearance; their aprons of white, or check, or brown, or red contributed a variety of colour; their leather mantles on their shoulders fluttered wildly in the wind; many of them brandished their assegais as if ready for action; others kept them balanced evenly in their hands; some of them continued to yell at the very top of their voices, and a few could be heard chanting, as if by anticipation, the strains of the lion-dance.
The climax was now at hand, and full of excitement it was. Again the lioness took refuge in a triangular thicket, with its vertex farthest from us. Close beside it was a sandbank, some ten feet high. Maranzian, with a number of men, placed himself on the right side of the thicket; I took up my position on the left, Cowley stationing himself on the sandbank at a point where he conceived the lioness when pressed by the negroes would try to escape. By encouraging words, and where words failed by the free use of a stout stick, Maranzian made a lot of the men go and ransack the reeds, and as they tumbled about they gave the place almost the aspect of a battle-field. The excitement became more intense when there remained but one little corner of the thicket to be explored. Now or never the lioness must be found. Suddenly there was an angry growl, and the beast leaped towards the pursuers. A shot was fired at that moment, but it only struck the sand; the negroes, taken by surprise, fell back, some of them disappearing altogether, a few of them desperately hurling their spears. Once again the lioness retreated, and when the natives had recovered themselves, they saw her crouching down as if prepared for another spring. Here was my chance; catching sight of her head, I took deliberate aim and fired; my shot took good effect, and at the same time a couple of spears hit her on the side. One more growl and she was dead.
It was only for greater precaution that Cowley and I, before we permitted the carcase to be moved, each put another bullet into it, but it was subsequently pierced by more than twenty spears; many of the negroes, as they approached the lifeless body, thrust the points of their assegais into it, muttering some mysterious formula. As it was the king’s cattle that had been slaughtered by the lions, the skull of the brute we had now killed would be employed as a charm, and hung up in the royal kraal.
Cowley and I returned home, leaving the carcase to be brought in afterwards. When it arrived it was received with much shouting and singing. It was carried by four of the strongest of the men on a couple of poles, its paws tied together, and its head hanging down well-nigh to the ground; it was brought into the town just as my own servants were returning with the buffalo-meat, and a large proportion of the male population turned out to greet the hunters. The next thing to be done was to beat the lion-drums, and to announce that the lion-dance would be performed. The procession advanced in two groups, one consisting of the bearers, with the carcase as a trophy of success; the other being the hunters. The leader of the expedition opened the dance, and he was followed by such of the huntsmen as had been nearest at the death; they were accompanied in their performance by the beating of a drum. The dancers next gave a representation of the lion-hunt, running in all directions, and pretending to hurl their spears; the singing was taken up by the two groups alternately, and though it was not so monotonous as some that I heard at other times, yet any melody it might have had was utterly destroyed by the painful discord of the instruments that accompanied it.