About This Time, Too, I
Had Many Helpers, And Several Officers - Civil,
Naval And Military - Came To Tsavo From The
Coast And Sat Up Night After Night In Order To Get
A Shot At Our Daring Foes.
All of us, however,
met with the same lack of success, and the lions
always seemed capable of avoiding the watchers,
while succeeding, at the same time in obtaining a
victim.
I have a very vivid recollection of one
particular night when the brutes seized a man from
the railway station and brought him close to
my camp to devour. I could plainly hear them
crunching the bones, and the sound of their
dreadful purring filled the air and rang in my
ears for days afterwards. The terrible thing
was to feel so helpless; it was useless to
attempt to go out, as of course the poor fellow
was dead, and in addition it was so pitch dark
as to make it impossible to see anything.
Some half a dozen workmen, who lived in a
small enclosure close to mine, became so terrified
on hearing the lions at their meal that they
shouted and implored me to allow them to come
inside my boma. This I willingly did, but soon
afterwards I remembered that one man had been
lying ill in their camp, and on making enquiry I
found that they had callously left him behind
alone. I immediately took some men with me to
bring him to my boma, but on entering his tent I
saw by the light of the lantern that the poor
fellow was beyond need of safety.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 55 of 247
Words from 15183 to 15451
of 68125
