They parted with great friendliness and said, “Perhaps in the course of our lives we shall meet again.” They went in opposite directions and lived alone, prowling every night in search of prey, and resting often during the day on branches of trees.
CHAPTER IX
THE BIG NJEGO BECOMES A MAN-EATER
Now we will only follow the big njego, having lost track of his mate. He was in a pitiful state, and mad with starvation. It happened one day that he saw a spring where human beings came every day to get water. He scented their footprints, and his appetite then seemed to increase tenfold. He followed the scent, which led him to their village, and as he came near the scent seemed to him the most delicious and appetizing aroma he had ever smelled.
“I have never dared,” said he, “to attack human beings before. I have always kept shy of them. But I am famished, and the country contains no prey, so that I shall die of starvation unless I eat one of them. So I must not be afraid.”
The village was fenced, and that first night he did not dare to leap over the fence, for he was timid in spite of what he had said to himself. Toward morning he hid in a thick part of the jungle close by the spring, and went to sleep on a cross branch of a tree. He was so hungry that after sunset he descended the tree, and lay in wait near the path leading to the spring, waiting for a human being to come. It was almost dark, and all the people had come to the spring to get water but one.
The njego’s quick ear soon heard footsteps coming, and presently he saw a woman with a big water jar on her head walking in the path toward the spring. He watched her. While she was bending over the water, filling her jug, he made a tremendous leap and landed on her back, fastening his claws in her body, at the same time that his big jaws with their terrible teeth sank into her back.
The poor woman was so paralyzed by fear that she did not utter a single cry. The leopard carried her into the jungle and devoured her. The flesh of the woman tasted so good, and the blood he licked was so sweet, that the njego thought it was better than all the kambis or anything else he had ever eaten in his life before, and he said to himself: “Why did I not dare to kill human beings before! They are harmless. This one did not fight. What a fool I have been!”
From that day the big njego was a man-eater. Soon after, a man who had gone into the forest for wild honey happened to pass near where the njego was, and he also was attacked and devoured. The njego became the terror of the people of that country.
The human beings, missing their fellows, went in search of them, and saw in one place the big footprints of the njego, and blood in another, and knew that a njego had turned into a “man-eater,” and was in the neighborhood, and had carried off their missing ones. There was great sorrow among the villagers at this discovery, for they thought more of them would be slain and devoured.
