A luncheon, with fruit, meat, curry and a pastry is ready by the time we are, and then we smoke or sleep through the broiling midday hours. Mr. Stephenson—or "Fred," as he is with us—and I go out on a scouting expedition and look for good specimens to add to our collection of horns or to get food for the porters. Sometimes the whole party went out, either photographing charging rhinos or shooting, but this part of the daily program was usually too varied to generalize as part of the daily doings. Several porters went with each of us to bring in the game, which there is rarely any uncertainty of securing.
In the evening we return and find our baths of hot water ready. We take off our heavy hunting boots and slip into the soft mosquito boots. After which dinner is ready and our menu is strangely varied. Sometimes we have kongoni steaks, at other times we have the heart of waterbuck or the liver of bushbuck or impalla. Twice we had rhino tongue and once rhino tail soup. We eat, and at six o'clock the darkness of night suddenly spreads over the land. We talk over our several adventures of the afternoon, some of which may be quite thrilling, and then, with camp chairs drawn around the great camp-fire, and with the sentinel askari pacing back and forth, we spend a drowsy hour in talking. Gradually the sounds of night come on. Off there a hyena is howling or a zebra is barking, and we know that through all those shadowy masses of trees the beasts of prey are creeping forth for their night's hunting. The porters' tents are ranged in a wide semicircle, and their camp-fires show little groups of men squatting about them. Somewhere one is playing a tin flute, another is playing a French harp, and some are singing. It is a picture never to be forgotten, and rich with a charm that will surely always send forth its call to the restless soul of the man who goes back to the city.
Sometimes the evening program is different. When one of us brings in some exceptional trophy there is a great celebration, with singing and native dances, and cheers for the Bwana who did the heroic deed. The first lion in a camp is a signal for great rejoicing and celebrating—however, that is another story—the story of my first lion.
At nine o'clock the tents are closed and all the camp is quiet in sleep. Outside in the darkness the askari paces to and fro, and the thick masses of foliage stand out in inky blackness against the brilliant tropic night. We are far from civilization, but one has as great a feeling of security as though he were surrounded by chimneys and electric lights. And no sleep is sweeter than that which has come after a day's marching over sun-swept hills or through the tangled reed beds where every sense must always be on the alert for hidden dangers.
CHAPTER VI
A LION DRIVE. WITH A RHINO IN RANGE SOME ONE SHOUTS "SIMBA" AND I GET MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF A WILD LION. THREE SHOTS AND OUT
Like every one who goes to Africa with a gun and a return ticket, I had two absorbing ambitions. One was to kill a lion and the other to live to tell about it. In my estimation all the other animals compared to a lion as latitude eighty-seven and a half compares to the north pole. I wanted to climb out of the Tartarin of Tarascon class of near lion hunters into the ranks of those who are entitled to remark, "Once, when I was in Africa shooting lions," etc. A dead lion is bogey in the big game sport—the score that every hunter dreams of achieving—and I was extremely eager to make the dream a reality.
When speaking with English sportsmen in London my first question was, "Did you get any lions?" If they had, they at once rose in my estimation; if not, no matter how many elephants or rhinos or buffaloes they may have shot, they still remained in the amateur class.
On the steamer going down to Mombasa the hunting talk was four-fifths lion and one-fifth about other game. The cripple who had been badly mauled by a lion was a person of much distinction, even more so than the ivory hunter who had killed three hundred elephants.