We had met with very fair sport, considering that we were only going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney, which was a very favourite “lie” for woodcocks, and generally held a pheasant or two as well.
“Well, what do you say?” said old Quatermain, “shall we beat through this for a finish?”
I assented, and he called to the keeper who was following with a little knot of beaters, and told him to beat the spinney.
“Very well, sir,” answered the man, “but it’s getting wonderful dark, and the wind’s rising a gale. It will take you all your time to hit a woodcock if the spinney holds one.”
“You show us the woodcocks, Jeffries,” answered Quatermain quickly, for he never liked being crossed in anything to do with sport, “and we will look after shooting them.”
The man turned and went rather sulkily. I heard him say to the under-keeper, “He’s pretty good, the master is, I’m not saying he isn’t, but if he kills a woodcock in this light and wind, I’m a Dutchman.”
I think that Quatermain heard him too, though he said nothing. The wind was rising every minute, and by the time the beat begun it blew big guns. I stood at the right-hand corner of the spinney, which curved round somewhat, and Quatermain stood at the left, about forty paces from me. Presently an old cock pheasant came rocketing over me, looking as though the feathers were being blown out of his tail. I missed him clean with the first barrel, and was never more pleased with myself in my life than when I doubled him up with the second, for the shot was not an easy one. In the faint light I could see Quatermain nodding his head in approval, when through the groaning of the trees I heard the shouts of the beaters, “Cock forward, cock to the right.” Then came a whole volley of shouts, “Woodcock to the right,” “Cock to the left,” “Cock over.”
I looked up, and presently caught sight of one of the woodcocks coming down the wind upon me like a flash. In that dim light I could not follow all his movements as he zigzagged through the naked tree-tops; indeed I could see him when his wings flitted up. Now he was passing me—bang, and a flick of the wing, I had missed him; bang again. Surely he was down; no, there he went to my left.
“Cock to you,” I shouted, stepping forward so as to get Quatermain between me and the faint angry light of the dying day, for I wanted to see if he would “wipe my eye.” I knew him to be a wonderful shot, but I thought that cock would puzzle him.
I saw him raise his gun ever so little and bend forward, and at that moment out flashed two woodcocks into the open, the one I had missed to his right, and the other to his left.
At the same time a fresh shout arose of, “Woodcock over,” and looking down the spinney I saw a third bird high up in the air, being blown along like a brown and whirling leaf straight over Quatermain’s head. And then followed the prettiest little bit of shooting that I ever saw. The bird to the right was flying low, not ten yards from the line of a hedgerow, and Quatermain took him first because he would become invisible the soonest of any. Indeed, nobody who had not his hawk’s eyes could have seen to shoot at all. But he saw the bird well enough to kill it dead as a stone. Then turning sharply, he pulled on the second bird at about forty-five yards, and over he went. By this time the third woodcock was nearly over him, and flying very high, straight down the wind, a hundred feet up or more, I should say. I saw him glance at it as he opened his gun, threw out the right cartridge and slipped in another, turning round as he did so. By this time the cock was nearly fifty yards away from him, and travelling like a flash. Lifting his gun he fired after it, and, wonderful as the shot was, killed it dead. A tearing gust of wind caught the dead bird, and blew it away like a leaf torn from an oak, so that it fell a hundred and thirty yards off or more.
“I say, Quatermain,” I said to him when the beaters were up, “do you often do this sort of thing?”
“Well,” he answered, with a dry smile, “the last time I had to load three shots as quickly as that was at rather larger game. It was at elephants. I killed them all three as dead as I killed those woodcocks; but it very nearly went the other way, I can tell you; I mean that they very nearly killed me.”
Just at that moment the keeper came up, “Did you happen to get one of them there cocks, sir?” he said, with the air of a man who did not in the least expect an answer in the affirmative.
“Well, yes, Jeffries,” answered Quatermain; “you will find one of them by the hedge, and another about fifty yards out by the plough there to the left——”
The keeper had turned to go, looking a little astonished, when Quatermain called him back.
“Stop a bit, Jeffries,” he said. “You see that pollard about one hundred and forty yards off? Well, there should be another woodcock down in a line with it, about sixty paces out in the field.”
“Well, if that bean’t the very smartest bit of shooting,” murmured Jeffries, and departed.
After that we went home, and in due course Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good arrived for dinner, the latter arrayed in the tightest and most ornamental dress-suit I ever saw. I remember that the waistcoat was adorned with five pink coral buttons.
It was a very pleasant dinner. Old Quatermain was in an excellent humour; induced, I think, by the recollection of his triumph over the doubting Jeffries. Good, too, was full of anecdotes. He told us a most miraculous story of how he once went shooting ibex in Kashmir. These ibex, according to Good, he stalked early and late for four entire days. At last on the morning of the fifth day he succeeded in getting within range of the flock, which consisted of a magnificent old ram with horns so long that I am afraid to mention their measure, and five or six females. Good crawled upon his stomach, painfully taking shelter behind rocks, till he was within two hundred yards; then he drew a fine bead upon the old ram. At this moment, however, a diversion occurred. Some wandering native of the hills appeared upon a distant mountain top. The females turned, and rushing over a rock vanished from Good’s ken. But the old ram took a bolder course. In front of him stretched a mighty crevasse at least thirty feet in width. He went at it with a bound. Whilst he was in mid-air Good fired, and killed him dead. The ram turned a complete somersault in space, and fell in such fashion that his horns hooked themselves upon a big projection of the opposite cliffs. There he hung, till Good, after a long and painful détour, gracefully dropped a lasso over him and fished him up.
This moving tale of wild adventure was received with undeserved incredulity.
“Well,” said Good, “if you fellows won’t believe my story when I tell it—a perfectly true story mind—perhaps one of you will give us a better; I’m not particular if it is true or not.” And he lapsed into a dignified silence.
“Now, Quatermain,” I said, “don’t let Good beat you, let us hear how you killed those elephants you were talking about this evening just after you shot the woodcocks.”
“Well,” said Quatermain, dryly, and with something like a twinkle in his brown eyes, “it is very hard fortune for a man to have to follow on Good’s ‘spoor.’ Indeed if it were not for that running giraffe which, as you will remember, Curtis, we saw Good bowl over with a Martini rifle at three hundred yards, I should almost have said that this was an impossible tale.”
Here Good looked up with an air of indignant innocence.
“However,” he went on, rising and lighting his pipe, “if you fellows like, I will spin you a yarn. I was telling one of you the other night about those three lions and how the lioness finished my unfortunate ‘voorlooper,’ Jim-Jim, the boy whom we buried in the bread-bag.
“Well, after this little experience I thought that I would settle down a bit, so I entered upon a venture with a man who, being of a speculative mind, had conceived the idea of running a store at Pretoria upon strictly cash principles. The arrangement was that I should find the capital and he the experience. Our partnership was not of a long duration. The Boers refused to pay cash, and at the end of four months my partner had the capital and I had the experience. After this I came to the conclusion that store-keeping was not in my line, and having four hundred pounds left, I sent my boy Harry to a school in Natal, and buying an outfit with what remained of the money, started upon a big trip.
“This time I determined to go further afield than I had ever been before; so I took a passage for a few pounds in a trading brig that ran between Durban and Delagoa Bay. From Delagoa Bay I marched inland accompanied by twenty porters, with the idea of striking up north, towards the Limpopo, and keeping parallel to the coast, but at a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles from it. For the first twenty days of our journey we suffered a good deal from fever, that is, my men did, for I think that I am fever proof. Also I was hard put to it to keep the camp in meat, for although the country proved to be very sparsely populated, there was but little game about. Indeed, during all that time I hardly killed anything larger than a waterbuck, and, as you know, waterbuck’s flesh is not very appetising food. On the twentieth day, however, we came to the banks of a largish river, the Gonooroo it was called. This I crossed, and then struck inland towards a great range of mountains, the blue crests of which we could see lying on the distant heavens like a shadow, a continuation, as I believe, of the Drakensberg range that skirts the coast of Natal. From this main range a great spur shoots out some fifty miles or so towards the coast, ending abruptly in one tremendous peak. This spur I discovered separated the territories of two chiefs named Nala and Wambe, Wambe’s territory being to the north, and Nala’s to the south. Nala ruled a tribe of bastard Zulus called the Butiana, and Wambe a much larger tribe, called the Matuku, which presents marked Bantu characteristics. For instance, they have doors and verandahs to their huts, work skins perfectly, and wear a waistcloth and not a moocha. At this time the Butiana were more or less subject to the Matuku, having been surprised by them some twenty years before and mercilessly slaughtered down. The tribe was now recovering itself, however, and as you may imagine, it did not love the Matuku.
“Well, I heard as I went along that elephants were very plentiful in the dense forests which lie upon the slopes and at the foot of the mountains that border Wambe’s territory. Also I heard a very ill report of that worthy himself, who lived in a kraal upon the side of the mountain, which was so strongly fortified as to be practically impregnable. It was said that he was the most cruel chief in this part of Africa, and that he had murdered in cold blood an entire party of English gentlemen, who, some seven years before, had gone into his country to hunt elephants. They took an old friend of mine with them as guide, John Every by name, and often had I mourned over his untimely death. All the same, Wambe or no Wambe, I determined to hunt elephants in his country. I never was afraid of natives, and I was not going to show the white feather now. I am a bit of a fatalist, as you fellows know, so I came to the conclusion that if it was fated that Wambe should send me to join my old friend John Every, I should have to go, and there was an end of it. Meanwhile, I meant to hunt elephants with a peaceful heart.
“On the third day from the date of our sighting the great peak, we found ourselves beneath its shadow. Still following the course of the river which wound through the forests at the base of the peak, we entered the territory of the redoubtable Wambe. This, however, was not accomplished without a certain difference of opinion between my bearers and myself, for when we reached the spot where Wambe’s boundary was supposed to run, the bearers sat down and emphatically refused to go a step further. I sat down too, and argued with them, putting my fatalistic views before them as well as I was able. But I could not persuade them to look at the matter in the same light. ‘At present,’ they said, ‘their skins were whole; if they went into Wambe’s country without his leave they would soon be like a water-eaten leaf. It was very well for me to say that this would be Fate. Fate no doubt might be walking about in Wambe’s country, but while they stopped outside they would not meet him.’
“‘Well,’ I said to Gobo, my head man, ‘and what do you mean to do?’
“‘We mean to go back to the coast, Macumazahn,’ he answered insolently.
“‘Do you?’ I replied, for my bile was stirred. ‘At any rate, Mr. Gobo, you and one or two others will never get there; see here, my friend,’ and I took a repeating rifle and sat myself comfortably down, resting my back against a tree—‘I have just breakfasted, and I had as soon spend the day here as anywhere else. Now if you or any of those men walk one step back from here, and towards the coast, I shall fire at you; and you know that I don’t miss.’
“The man fingered the spear he was carrying—luckily all my guns were stacked against the tree—and then turned as though to walk away, the others keeping their eyes fixed upon him all the while. I rose and covered him with the rifle, and though he kept up a brave appearance of unconcern, I saw that he was glancing nervously at me all the time. When he had gone about twenty yards I spoke very quietly—
“‘Now, Gobo,’ I said, ‘come back, or I shall fire.’
“Of course this was taking a very high hand; I had no real right to kill Gobo or anybody else because they objected to run the risk of death by entering the territory of a hostile chief. But I felt that if I wished to keep up any authority it was absolutely necessary that I should push matters to the last extremity short of actually shooting him. So I sat there, looking fierce as a lion, and keeping the sight of my rifle in a dead line for Gobo’s ribs. Then Gobo, feeling that the situation was getting strained, gave in.
“‘Don’t shoot, Boss,’ he shouted, throwing up his hand, ‘I will come with you.’
“‘I thought you would,’ I answered quietly; ‘you see Fate walks about outside Wambe’s country as well as in it.’
“After that I had no more trouble, for Gobo was the ringleader, and when he collapsed the others collapsed also. Harmony being thus restored, we crossed the line, and on the following morning I began shooting in good earnest.”