Our Personal Servants Also
Lived Within The Enclosure, And A Bright Fire Was
Always Kept Up Throughout The Night.
For the
sake of coolness, Brock and I used to sit out under
the verandah of this hut in
The evenings; but it
was rather trying to our nerves to attempt to
read or write there, as we never knew when a lion
might spring over the boma, and be on us before
we were aware. We therefore kept our rifles
within easy reach, and cast many an anxious
glance out into the inky darkness beyond the
circle of the firelight. On one or two occasions,
we found in the morning that the lions had come
quite close to the fence; but fortunately they
never succeeded in getting through.
By this time, too, the camps of the workmen
had also been surrounded by thorn fences;
nevertheless the lions managed to jump over or to
break through some one or other of these, and
regularly every few nights a man was carried
off, the reports of the disappearance of this or
that workman coming in to me with painful
frequency. So long, however, as Railhead
Camp - with its two or three thousand men,
scattered over a wide area - remained at Tsavo,
the coolies appeared not to take much notice
of the dreadful deaths of their comrades. Each
man felt, I suppose, that as the man-eaters had
such a large number of victims to choose from,
the chances of their selecting him in particular
were very small.
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