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The men turned sullenly to their bales, and Asmani, the gigantic guide, our fundi, was heard grumblingly to say he was sorry he had engaged to guide me to the Tanganika. However, they started, though reluctantly. I stayed behind with my gunbearers, to drive the stragglers on.
Clark, and after a long search found them, and together they arrived a couple of hours later, followed by gunbearers and saises. Mr. Stephenson had gone back to camp to see that salt and supplies, with one tent, were sent out. Then began the work of measuring the elephant, a work that must be done most thoroughly when the trophy is to be mounted entire.
Second in the list came our four gunbearers, all Somalis, they being considered the best gunbearers. The duty of the gunbearer is always to be with you when you are hunting, to carry your gun, and to have it in your hand the instant it is needed. Then there were four second gunbearers, who came along just behind the first gunbearers.
The gunbearer has instructions never to fire unless his master is disarmed and down before the charge of a beast. When an animal is killed the gunbearers skin it and care for the trophy. Usually when on a shooting jaunt of several hours from camp several porters go along to carry home the game. Third in the social scale came the askaris armed natives in uniforms who guard the camp at night.
"Fundi," said I, "if you are a gunbearer, prepare this beast." He stepped up confidently and set to work. I watched him closely. He did it very well, without awkwardness, though he made one or two minor mistakes in method. "Have you done this before?" I inquired. "No, bwana." "How did you learn to do it?" "I have watched the gunbearers when I was a porter bringing in meat."*
One day we all set out to make our discoveries: F., B., and I with our gunbearers, Memba Sasa, Mavrouki, and Simba, and ten porters to bring in the trophies, which we wanted very much, and the meat, which the men wanted still more. We rode our horses, and the syces followed. This made quite a field force-nineteen men all told.
So the hunter, unable to see anything, and feeling very small, huddles with his gunbearers in a compact group, listening to the wild surging short rushes, now this way, now that, hoping that the stampede may not run over him. If by chance it does, he has his two shots and the possibility of hugging a tree while the rush divides around him.
The photograph was excellent and quite dramatic. For an hour the gunbearers worked on the dead rhino and finally secured the head and feet and certain desirable parts of the skin. At noon we resumed our march for camp, two or three miles away. We had hardly gone half the distance when one of the tent boys was seen far ahead, riding the one mule that we had dared to bring down the Tana River.
My first bullet had hit her leg, and the last had reached her heart. Every one shook me by the hand. The gunbearers squatted about the carcass, skilfully removing the skin to an undertone of curious crooning that every few moments broke out into one or two bars of a chant. As the body was uncovered, the men crouched about to cut off little pieces of fat.
Several porters were left where the lions could constantly see them, while we three, Akeley, Stephenson and I, with our six gunbearers, worked around the base of the hill until we were able to climb up on the crest of it, being thus constantly screened from view of the lions. At the crest was an abrupt outcropping of blackened rocks, where we stopped to locate the two animals.
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