JIM-JIM IS AVENGED
"We never bathed in that pool again; indeed for my part I could never look at its peaceful purity fringed round with waving ferns without thinking of that ghastly head which rolled itself off through the water when we tried to catch it.
"Poor Jim-Jim! We buried what was left of him, which was not very much, in an old bread-bag, and though whilst he lived his virtues were not great, now that he was gone we could have wept over him.Indeed, Harry did weep outright; while Pharaoh used very bad language in Zulu, and I registered a quiet little vow on my account that I would let daylight into that lioness before I was forty-eight hours older, if by any means it could be done.
"Well, we buried him, and there he lies in the bread-bag (which Irather grudged him, as it was the only one we had), where lions will not trouble him any more--though perhaps the hy?nas will, if they consider that there is enough on him left to make it worth their while to dig him up.However, he won't mind that; so there is an end of the book of Jim-Jim.
"The question that now remained was, how to circumvent his murderess.
I knew that she would be sure to return as soon as she was hungry again, but I did not know when she would be hungry.She had left so little of Jim-Jim behind her that I should scarcely expect to see her the next night, unless indeed she had cubs.Still, I felt that it would not be wise to miss the chance of her coming, so we set about making preparations for her reception.The first thing that we did was to strengthen the bush wall of the skerm by dragging a large quantity of the tops of thorn-trees together, and laying them one on the other in such a fashion that the thorns pointed outwards.This, after our experience of the fate of Jim-Jim, seemed a very necessary precaution, since if where one goat can jump another can follow, as the Kaffirs say, how much more is this the case when an animal so active and so vigorous as the lion is concerned! And now came the further question, how were we to beguile the lioness to return? Lions are animals that have a strange knack of appearing when they are not wanted, and keeping studiously out of the way when their presence is required.Of course it was possible that if she had found Jim-Jim to her liking she would come back to see if there were any more of his kind about, but still it was not to be relied on.
"Harry, who as I have said was an eminently practical boy, suggested to Pharaoh that he should go and sit outside the skerm in the moonlight as a sort of bait, assuring him that he would have nothing to fear, as we should certainly kill the lioness before she killed him.Pharaoh however, strangely enough, did not seem to take to this suggestion.Indeed, he walked away, much put out with Harry for having made it.
"It gave me an idea, however.
"'By Jove!' I said, 'there is the sick ox.He must die sooner or later, so we may as well utilize him.'
"Now, about thirty yards to the left of our skerm, as one stood facing down the hill towards the river, was the stump of a tree that had been destroyed by lightning many years before, standing equidistant between, but a little in front of, two clumps of bush, which were severally some fifteen paces from it.
"Here was the very place to tie the ox; and accordingly a little before sunset the sick animal was led forth by Pharaoh and made fast there, little knowing, poor brute, for what purpose; and we began our long vigil, this time without a fire, for our object was to attract the lioness and not to scare her.
"For hour after hour we waited, keeping ourselves awake by pinching each other--it is, by the way, remarkable what a difference of opinion as to the force of pinches requisite to the occasion exists in the mind of pincher and pinched--but no lioness came.At last the moon went down, and darkness swallowed up the world, as the Kaffirs say, but no lions came to swallow us up.We waited till dawn, because we did not dare to go to sleep, and then at last with many bad thoughts in our hearts we took such rest as we could get, and that was not much.
"That morning we went out shooting, not because we wanted to, for we were too depressed and tired, but because we had no more meat.For three hours or more we wandered about in a broiling sun looking for something to kill, but with absolutely no results.For some unknown reason the game had grown very scarce about the spot, though when Iwas there two years before every sort of large game except rhinoceros and elephant was particularly abundant.The lions, of whom there were many, alone remained, and I fancy that it was the fact of the game they live on having temporarily migrated which made them so daring and ferocious.As a general rule a lion is an amiable animal enough if he is left alone, but a hungry lion is almost as dangerous as a hungry man.One hears a great many different opinions expressed as to whether or no the lion is remarkable for his courage, but the result of my experience is that very much depends upon the state of his stomach.Ahungry lion will not stick at a trifle, whereas a full one will flee at a very small rebuke.
"Well, we hunted all about, and nothing could we see, not even a duiker or a bush buck; and at last, thoroughly tired and out of temper, we started on our way back to camp, passing over the brow of a steepish hill to do so.Just as we climbed the crest of the ridge Icame to a stand, for there, about six hundred yards to my left, his beautiful curved horns outlined against the soft blue of the sky, Isaw a noble koodoo bull (/Strepsiceros kudu/).Even at that distance, for as you know my eyes are very keen, I could distinctly see the white stripes on its side when the light fell upon it, and its large and pointed ears twitch as the flies worried it.
