Chapter IV

“Now you’ll see plainly enough that this new development had made matters ten times worse. Yet instead of that depressing me it bucked me like a glass of brandy. Sitting there on the log and thinking of those bog patches round us like traps I’d been down out of sight in the blues; but now I was as full of life and energy as a grig. Had to be, for the boys, stampeded by fright, tried to break. Tellemark and I had our work cut out kicking and gun-butting them so that at the end of two minutes they were as frightened of us as of Gombi. If we hadn’t done that they’d have run in every direction, north, south, east and west, and some would have been bogged and the rest starved and we with them, for they were throwing the provisions away. We stopped all that and made them shoulder the bundles and shoulder the tusks. It may seem funny to you that we should bother about the tusks, seeing the position we were in; but if we had abandoned that ivory just then we would have lost half our hold over the boys; they’d have seen that Gombi had rattled us.

“We struck the nipa palms after half an hour or so and turned north, Tellemark leading, while I brought up the rear, each of us with our guns ready to shoot the first man that bolted and both of us full up with the knowledge that somewhere in the trees Gombi was tracking us and only waiting his chance.

“We had frightened him evidently by chasing and firing through the bushes, for the whole of that day we heard no more from him. We made good way and got clear at last from the infernal nipa palms into a great tract of cottonwoods and nsambyas.

“Lord! it was like getting out of prison. We knew we had got to the stump end of the bogs and, turning due east, we reckoned an eight-hour tramp or so would bring us out somewhere into the open where we had left the main camp.

“Tellemark and I figured it out as we went. Four hours due east, was our idea, and four hours due south. We were right as it afterward turned out, but we had reckoned without the dark. A couple of hours after we had turned east it came on and we had to camp in a little glade, eating our supper in the last of the daylight and then lying down. We daren’t build a fire and we put out no sentries. If Gombi were laying round, sentries were no use against him in that black dark and he was the only thing we feared. We lay spread about, the boys pretty close together and Tellemark and I apart from them and side by side.

“We talked for a bit as we lay there, speaking almost in a whisper, and then we lay quiet, but we couldn’t sleep. The boys slept like logs. They thought themselves safe in the dark, no doubt.

“As for myself I felt certain that beast was lurking somewhere near and that he would be up to some trick, though what I couldn’t say. I lay listening for sounds and heard plenty. Away off, miles away it seemed, I heard the cry of a lion. Not the questing cry, but the cry of a lion that has fed; then I heard the rooting of a bush pig. Then, somewhere in the forest, maybe a mile away, a tree went smash. You often hear that and there is no other sound like it. Some great cottonwood or euphorbia going rotten for years had suddenly tumbled.

“After that things got pretty silent till suddenly there came a little sound that made my heart jump—something different from any other sound.

“‘Thr-rub-b!’

“I couldn’t be sure, but I could have sworn it was the sound of a taut string suddenly relaxed. I waited. Then after a while it came again.

“‘Thr-rub-b!’

“I drew my head close to Tellemark’s and whispered, ‘Is that the sound of a bow?’

“‘Yes,’ he whispered.

“‘Shall we fire?’ I asked him, and he whispered back, ‘No, we’d stampede the boys—chap’s shooting on chance: Don’t move.’

“I took his meaning. Gombi had marked us down. Afraid of firing when there was light enough to chase him by, he was shooting blind in the hope of bagging some of us—maybe getting the lot. He’d hit nothing as yet evidently.

“I lay still and said my prayers and the thing went on. Five or six times that bow went; then it stopped. A minute passed, ten minutes.

“I whispered to Tellemark, ‘He’s gone,’ and the whisper came back, ‘Not he—changing his position.’

“I felt things running down my face—sweat drops. Far away off in the woods came a cry; it was the cry of a hyena; then silence shut down again. Not a sound, till suddenly—but farther away now—came the noise of the bow.

“‘Thr-rub-b!’ and after it, right over my head, something passed through the air.

‘Whitt!’ An arrow had missed me by inches. I whispered to Tellemark. ‘Shall we fire?’ and the whisper came back, ‘No. Don’t know where he is. Flash would give him our position—stampede boys. Chance it.’

“It went on. No more arrows came near. Then it stopped. The beast was evidently changing his position again. A minute passed and then suddenly out of the dark there came a muffled crash followed by a squeal and silence. I listened, the sweat running into my eyes, and there came a new sound close beside me. It was from Tellemark. He seemed in convulsions. I thought one of the poisoned arrows must have got him, he was shaking and choking. I clutched him by the shoulder but he shook himself free.

“I’m all right,’ he whispered. ‘I’m only laughing—oh, Lord, can’t you see, that chap’s fallen into an elephant trap.’ Then he went off again. It wasn’t laughter so much as hysterics, sheer hysterics from the snapping of the tension and the relief.

“Tellemark had an ear that could tell the meaning of any sound, and by the sound he had heard he could tell the truth as plainly as though he had seen Gombi treading on the bush covering of an elephant trap and its collapse. Now that he had told me, I could see it too. After a while, when he had quieted down, I asked him should we rouse the boys and get the beast out, and he whispered ‘No, can’t do it in the dark. Leave him till morning and get to sleep.’

“I heard him give a few more chuckles as he turned about, then I heard him breathing quietly and next minute I was asleep myself. I slept for hours and when I awoke it was just before dawn. Tellemark had stirred me up. ‘Smell that?’ he whispered.

“I did. Then the truth broke upon me and I lay there in the dark thinking of Gombi’s work and waiting for day to show how many he had got. Then as the day broke I could see, lying there among the others who were soundly asleep, the swollen bodies of three of the boys, each with an arrow sticking somewhere in him. The bite of the arrows hadn’t been enough to wake them.

“‘We’ve got to get those chaps away before the others see them,’ said Tellemark. We did—into the woods far to leeward. When we returned, we could see in the stronger light arrows sticking here and there in the trees, arrows that had missed their mark. We broke them off carefully, and flung them away lest the boys should see them. Then we located the pit with its broken cover. Then, and not till then, we kicked the boys awake and before they had time to look round told them Gombi was in the pit.

“Tellemark had peeped down and seen that it was unstaked, and then began a powwow as to how we should get the creature out.

“All sorts of suggestions came from the boys, one fellow wanted to catch a wild cat and lower it tied by the tail, the cat would catch Gombi and we’d drag both up. Not a bad idea either, only we hadn’t a wild cat. Then I solved the business by jumping down myself. He showed no fight and we had him out in a tick and he bothered the world no more.

“That’s all; we got back to camp all right, only we forgot the tusks in our excitement, nearly three hundred pounds of ivory.

“Those slippers,” finished the collector of trophies, “are made of Gombi’s skin. Allenby, of Bond Street, made them for me.”

By his look of expectancy I guessed at once that I was not the only man he had trapped into wearing those slippers while listening to that tale. But the howl of disgust he was waiting for never came—and he never forgave me, I think. The story ought to end here, but it doesn’t. For the chief protagonist is not Gombi but Patrick Spence.

It remains only to ask and answer the debated question—does the gun like the fishing rod breed liars?

At the great sale after Sir Patrick’s death I bought those slippers for four and sixpence and sent them to a high authority, with a simple question and a stamped telegraph form. The reply came promptly next day. “Absolutely not. Lamb skin.”

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 7, 1922 issue of The Popular Magazine.]