The terror of the sudden charge had
proved too much for Mahina, and both he and
the carbine were by this time well on their way up
a tree. In the circumstances there was nothing
to do but follow suit, which I did without loss of
time: and but for the fact that one of my shots
had broken a hind leg, the brute would most
certainly have had me. Even as it was, I had
barely time to swing myself up out of his reach
before he arrived at the foot of the tree.
When the lion found he was too late, he
started to limp back to the thicket; but by this
time I had seized the carbine from Mahina, and
the first shot I fired from it seemed to give him
his quietus, for he fell over and lay motionless.
Rather foolishly, I at once scrambled down from
the tree and walked up towards him. To my
surprise and no little alarm he jumped up and
attempted another charge. This time, however,
a Martini bullet in the chest and another in the
head finished him for good and all; he dropped
in his tracks not five yards away from me, and
died gamely, biting savagely at a branch which
had fallen to the ground.
By this time all the workmen in camp, attracted
by the sound of the firing, had arrived on the
scene, and so great was their resentment against
the brute who had killed such numbers of their
comrades that it was only with the greatest
difficulty that I could restrain them from tearing
the dead body to pieces. Eventually, amid the
wild rejoicings of the natives and coolies, I had
the lion carried to my boma, which was close at
hand. On examination we found no less than
six bullet holes in the body, and embedded only
a little way in the flesh of the back was the slug
which I had fired into him from the scaffolding
about ten days previously. He measured nine
feet six inches from tip of nose to tip of tail,
and stood three feet eleven and a half inches
high; but, as in the case of his companion,
the skin was disfigured by being deeply scored
all over by the boma thorns.
The news of the death of the second "devil"
soon spread far and wide over the country, and
natives actually travelled from up and down the
line to have a look at my trophies and at the
"devil-killer", as they called me. Best of all, the
coolies who had absconded came flocking back to
Tsavo, and much to my relief work was resumed
and we were never again troubled by man-eaters.
It was amusing, indeed, to notice the change
which took place in the attitude of the workmen
towards me after I had killed the two lions.
Instead of wishing to murder me, as they once
did, they could not now do enough for me, and as
a token of their gratitude they presented me with
a beautiful silver bowl, as well as with a long
poem written in Hindustani describing all our
trials and my ultimate victory. As the poem
relates our troubles in somewhat quaint and
biblical language, I have given a translation of it
in the appendix. The bowl I shall always
consider my most highly prized and hardest won
trophy. The inscription on it reads as follows: -
SIR, - We, your Overseer, Timekeepers,
Mistaris and Workmen, present you with this
bowl as a token of our gratitude to you for your
bravery in killing two man-eating lions at great
risk to your own life, thereby saving us from
the fate of being devoured by these terrible
monsters who nightly broke into our tents and
took our fellow-workers from our side. In
presenting you with this bowl, we all add our
prayers for your long life, happiness and
prosperity. We shall ever remain, Sir, Your
grateful servants,
Baboo PURSHOTAM HURJEE PURMAR,
Overseer and Clerk of Works,
on behalf of your Workmen.
Dated at Tsavo, January 30, 1899.
Before I leave the subject of "the man-eaters
of Tsavo," it may be of interest to mention that
these two lions possess the distinction, probably
unique among wild animals, of having been
specifically referred to in the House of Lords by
the Prime Minister of the day. Speaking of the
difficulties which had been encountered in the
construction of the Uganda Railway, the late
Lord Salisbury said: -
"The whole of the works were put a stop to
for three weeks because a party of man-eating
lions appeared in the locality and conceived a
most unfortunate taste for our porters. At last
the labourers entirely declined to go on unless
they were guarded by an iron entrenchment. Of
course it is difficult to work a railway under
these conditions, and until we found an
enthusiastic sportsman to get rid of these lions, our
enterprise was seriously hindered."
Also, The Spectator of March 3, 1900, had
an article entitled "The Lions that Stopped
the Railway," from which the following extracts
are taken: -
"The parallel to the story of the lions which
stopped the rebuilding of Samaria must occur
to everyone, and if the Samaritans had quarter
as good cause for their fears as had the railway
coolies, their wish to propitiate the local deities
is easily understood. If the whole body of lion
anecdote, from the days of the Assyrian Kings
till the last year of the nineteenth century, were
collated and brought together, it would not equal
in tragedy or atrocity, in savageness or in sheer
insolent contempt for man, armed or unarmed,
white or black, the story of these two beasts.
"To what a distance the whole story carries
us back, and how impossible it becomes to
account for the survival of primitive man against
this kind of foe!
