Carefully going back to where Abokr had caught the mule, and taking up the back trail, we met two Malingúr, the first we had seen for some days; and answering to our anxious inquiries they first, native-like, said they knew nothing, and then that they had seen marks in the ground, showing that a lion had carried away a man. Promising a reward, I took these men as guides, and they led us to a small ravine, where, on examining the sand, we found what had been poor Daura’s fate. While he had been quietly riding along at a walk across the ravine a lioness had rushed upon the mule, which, shying, had thrown Daura upon the ground and galloped away. The lioness had sprung upon Daura, and after a struggle, as was shown by the state of the sand, killed him; and his stick, broken in three places, lay on the scene of the fight. The lioness had then dragged him away into the jungle, up a slope covered with thick khansa bushes; and following at a run, we saw pieces of red-bordered waist-cloth, which we knew to be Daura’s, hanging to the thorn bushes; later on the piece of leather, enclosing a verse of the Koran, which he had worn round his neck, and the pouch, with a jag and piece of oiled rag, with which he had been accustomed to clean his own rifle, and which he had always carried, attached to an old luggage-strap, round his waist. On coming to some very large and dense khansa bushes a little ahead of the men, I at last found Daura’s body. Every vestige of clothing had been torn off by the bushes. There were twenty holes in his throat from the teeth of the lioness, and his right leg had been bitten off at the hip, leaving a foot of the thigh-bone protruding. His hands and cheeks were also bitten through, showing that he had fought for his life; and it seemed particularly hard luck that he of all my men had been caught thus unarmed, for he was the best shot in the party, and would have been well able to defend himself if he had only carried the Martini-Henry which was usually in his possession.
The lioness had disappeared; so wrapping Daura’s body in a waterproof sheet, and roping it up on to a camel, I started the men off for camp, and cantered on ahead on the mule to give orders for a grave to be dug. I had first asked my men to help me follow the lioness up at once, but they insisted that Daura must be buried first.
As I reined up in camp the camelmen came to me smiling to say “Salaam aleikum,” expecting to hear that I had bagged a lion, which had made me late. Passing those in front I rode into the zeríba quietly and said, “Daura is dead.” A curious change came over all the men, who stood about awkwardly, not knowing where to look; and when I told off men for the burying party, and another party to follow the lioness with me, the men moved about dreamily as if not understanding the calamity which had fallen upon them. Some one said, “Not Daura? Not our Daura?” and they only realised what had happened when Daura’s body was brought up on the camel and laid on the grass before them.
I determined to devote the next twenty-four hours to hunting up the lioness, and having organised a party of trackers, I left the remainder of the men to bury my follower, and we started off on foot for the khansa thicket where we had found the body. We described a circle at fifty yards’ distance from the thicket, the ground being very stony and covered with bushes, when we at last came upon the track of the lioness; and following this for three miles over most difficult ground, always covered with dense thickets, at sunset we gave it up.
Returning to camp I chanced to look round, when my eye fell upon the lioness, her head being raised above a tuft of grass in a passage between two khansa bushes.[45] Turning round I took a quiet pot shot at her; a lioness’s head half hidden in grass, at ninety yards’ distance and in the dusk, is not a good target, and before I could see under the smoke I knew that I had missed, for there was only the ringing of the metal of my rifle in my ears, and no answering thud of the bullet hitting flesh. Running up to the spot on which she had been crouching, we examined the track where she had bounded away, and holding the trail for a quarter of a mile through the thick covert, and with the greatest difficulty, the men kneeling over displaced gravel, broken twigs, and other scanty evidences of her passage, and finding no sign of blood, we gave her up and sadly made for camp, which was reached an hour or two after dark.
On the next day we again took up the signs from where we had left them, slight rain having fallen in the night; and search as we would, we could never find any indication of her having stayed in the neighbourhood. All the tracks were those of the night before, and making a final circular cast of a mile round through the bush over gravelly ground, we gave up the search, and I resolved to march on towards the coast, having no more leave to spare.
Passing Daura’s grave we surprised two hyænas trying to grub up the stones that had been heaped over the poor fellow, and dropped one dead, and sent the other moaning away with a bullet in his ribs. The Malingúr, who turned out to be those who had been at Durhi a month ago, begged me to remain and have another try for the lion and lioness (for there were a pair of man-eaters here), so I had a zeríba built, and tied up a donkey, and sat up all night six feet away from it, but without result. The Malingúr said that since the lion had killed the woman a month ago, five men and another woman had been carried off by the pair, my man Daura being the eighth human victim within the month!
We resumed our journey on the following morning towards the coast.[46] Passing through the Sheikh Ash tribe and thence by Milmil, we reached the Rer Ali at Warma-kés in the Haud Plateau, after eight marches, on 24th May.
The Rer Ali turned out fifty horsemen to dibáltig before me, and I gave a show in return, advancing over the plain and firing volleys of blank cartridge with my twenty camelmen, and whistling them up to form rallying groups against cavalry. I refused, however, to part with any tobes, so they said I was “good but stingy.” They told me that lately an English officer had been sent from Aden to Harar, and he had ordered the Abyssinians to evacuate the town within a fortnight. This information turned out to be based on my own peaceful visit to Rás Makunan, and was thus distorted by passing from mouth to mouth! We made a detour to the east of several days’ journey in order to come on to ground frequented by Clarke’s gazelle, and I was so fortunate as to shoot a very good buck of this rare antelope and to pick up two pairs of horns.
While marching through a jungle called Gouss in the Haud, I started about forty oryx, which galloped past us looking like a body of cavalry with sloped swords. Sorely tempted, I fired at the galloping line, and then ran up and found a splendid bull lying dead. His horns were the best I have ever possessed, being nearly three feet long, very thick, and with a slight and very beautiful curve backwards.