Theseus, Who Cleared The Roads Of Beasts
And Robbers; Hercules, The Lion Killer; St.
George, The Dragon-Slayer, And All The Rest Of
Their Class Owed To This Their Everlasting Fame.
From The Story Of The Tsavo River We Can
Appreciate Their Services To Man Even At This
Distance Of Time.
When the jungle twinkled
with hundreds of lamps, as the shout went on
from camp to camp that the
First lion was dead,
as the hurrying crowds fell prostrate in the
midnight forest, laying their heads on his feet,
and the Africans danced savage and ceremonial
dances of thanksgiving, Mr. Patterson must have
realised in no common way what it was to have
been a hero and deliverer in the days when
man was not yet undisputed lord of the creation,
and might pass at any moment under the savage
dominion of the beasts."
Well had the two man-eaters earned all this
fame; they had devoured between them no less
than twenty-eight Indian coolies, in addition to
scores of unfortunate African natives of whom
no official record was kept.
CHAPTER X
THE COMPLETION OF THE TSAVO BRIDGE
When all the excitement had died down
and there was no longer any dread of the
man-eaters, work went on briskly, and the bridge
over the Tsavo rapidly neared completion. As
the piers and abutments progressed in height,
the question of how to lift the large stones into
their positions had to be solved. We possessed
no cranes for this purpose, so I set to work
and improvised a shears made of a couple of
thirty-foot rails.
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