From Veldt Camp Fires

Chapter Fourteen.

Charlie Thirlmere’s Lion

On a March morning Charlie Thirlmere and his wife were at breakfast in their pretty flat near Park Lane. A cloud sat on Charlie’s fresh, good-looking face. He looked at his wife curiously, and then launched into the business that worried him.

“Sybil,” he said, “we must pull up. I want to have a serious talk with you.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t begin business at this unearthly period,” replied Sybil. “I am going out riding in less than an hour, and I haven’t time.”

“You can spare ten minutes, old girl,” he said; “and things are getting into such a hobble that we must pull up and make an alteration. If we don’t, another year or two will see us stony, so far as I am concerned.”

“Well, go on,” returned Sybil, putting her red lips to a cup of tea, “and do compress your lecture. At eleven Cecil Cloudesley will be here with a new pony we want to look at.”

Charlie’s brows knitted into a little frown. “Oh! hang Cecil Cloudesley and his ponies!” he exclaimed. “Three years ago when we married,” he went on, “we had sixteen hundred a year between us. You had seven hundred, I had nine hundred. Well, I’ve often told you we’ve been going the pace far too much – it’s been my fault, I admit, quite as much as yours – and now this is how we stand. I’ve had to break into my capital – four times in three years, as Jesson and Fosbery remind me – and now my income is reduced to something over four hundred. Your money, thank goodness, is tied up. Eleven hundred would do us passably well, living quietly in the country; and to that we shall have to make up our minds. I’ve given up my nags, as you know. After July we must sell off, give up the flat, and retrench seriously. I’ve had enough of this sort of thing, and I’m getting heartily sick of it. I’m getting soft and hipped, and I loathe this incessant keeping up appearances, and living beyond one’s means. And there’s the baby. Poor little chap, he sees precious little of us, living as we do. We must give him a chance. I’m sure he needs fresh air and a country life far more even than we do!”

This reference to her two-year-old child was rather a sore subject for Sybil. She knew that in the whirling life she led, she had really neglected the youngster. But her spirit rose instantly to combat the suggestion.

“Oh, Arthur’s all right,” she returned with some sharpness. “He was at the mater’s for a month at Christmas, and he’ll be there again in May or June. But we can’t live on a thousand a year, that’s certain. I suppose you can get something to do. I can’t – I really can’t – be buried alive in the country.”

“Well,” returned her husband, a little hot at the cool way in which she had met his advance. “I’ve been thinking over things. I shall sell out another thousand or so and go off to Rhodesia, and try and pick up some mining claims or town lots. You must live on 900 pounds a year somehow, and I’ll do the best I can to pick up some oof. Anyhow I’m tired of this sort of life. I see very little of you, and you can put up with my absence for a year, I suppose.”

“I might perhaps even exist for two years without the light of your countenance, Charlie, if I tried very hard!” retorted Sybil.

A little flush had risen to her cheeks, and a rebellious sparkle flashed in her dark eyes. She had not reckoned upon this proposition. Charlie was useful, nay, necessary to her in a hundred little ways, and she hated the idea of parting from him. She was angry with herself and with him.

“Well, that settles it,” rejoined her husband coolly. “I’ll try and make some coin in Mashonaland, and you stay at home and pull in a bit. We shall be better friends when I come back. Somehow this town life doesn’t suit either of us. We hit it off a thousand times better when we lived at the Grange.”

He rose and lit a cigarette.

“I’ll settle up all outstanding things,” he went on; “and if you stay in town you’ll have to do with one pony for riding, and hire a Victoria when you want it I should advise your staying with your mother for six months. She’ll be delighted to have you and the youngster.”

“I can’t part with either Dandy or The Barber,” returned Sybil hotly, “and you really needn’t bother me as to my movements. I can take care of myself very well during your absence.”

Thirlmere glanced at his wife. She was not looking his way, her thoughts ran elsewhere. He was extremely fond of her, and, at this moment, just as he was about leaving her, she looked, he thought, more charming than ever. He went to her side, stooped, and kissed her soft cheek. The caress was accepted with something very like indifference.

“Very well, old girl,” he said. “Don’t worry yourself. I know you are right enough. You have plenty of wits and abounding common sense. Give up some of the crowd you are swimming with. I dare say when I’m gone you’ll make a change and pull in. I don’t demand it. I hope it, and expect it, from your good sense, and I know you as well as you know yourself.”

“There, don’t preach, Charlie,” replied his wife. “I’m awfully busy this morning. Do go and look after your own work. If you’re off to Rhodesia, you must have heaps to do.”

Thirlmere quitted the room, and Sybil breathed a sigh of relief.

Two months after this morning in March, Charlie Thirlmere was in Mashonaland, wandering about the country in the company of a mining prospector, shooting and exploring. They had for months very little success. Most of the likely spots for gold had been already pegged out by their forerunners. They returned to Salisbury and fitted out an expedition for the Zambesi Valley. They were away seven months, discovered indications of a coalfield, and then, on their way into Salisbury again, stumbled, within fifty miles of the town, upon a strong gold reef. It was in a broad, rich-looking valley, of romantic beauty, well-wooded in parts with acacia, Kaffir orange, and other trees, and hemmed in by massive granite kopjes – huge masses of rock, strewn as if by the hands of giants – with a pleasant little river, fringed with palmetto, meandering beneath the rock-walls. So rich, apparently, was the reef, that they pegged out at once, procured some native labour, built a couple of huts, and, sending into Salisbury for dynamite, roping and windlass, and fresh implements, determined to camp for some months, and go in for a systematic opening up of the reef.

The weeks ran by. The hot season, the second since Thirlmere had left England, was approaching. Already the rains were upon them, and they had begun to experience some of the miseries of living under constant tropical downpours in leaky native huts, thatched carelessly with grass by lazy Mashonas. Yet the mine prospects were so good that they hung on.

It was now December. They had sent in a native servant with their last remaining donkey to bring out supplies and some few luxuries, and awaited his return impatiently. They had reached the valley with four donkeys, the poor remnants of their long Zambesi string; but lions, which were troublesome and daring, had killed three, as well as their sole remaining horse. The camp was very quiet, only two or three native workers were with them, and from these they extracted precious little labour at their shafts and other operations. John Brightling, a Cornish miner, a capital fellow, Thirlmere’s constant companion in his prospecting operations for a full year past, was down with fever. Thirlmere himself was feeling none too fit, but was still well enough to tend his sick comrade.

Night fell. It was a dark night, with no moon, and a threatening of heavy rain. Charlie Thirlmere had had a fire kindled between the two huts – their own and the natives’ – but at nine o’clock, a drenching thunderstorm, which came roaring and reverberating with fierce lightnings and deafening re-echoes among the kopjes, effectually put an end to it, Brightling had felt better towards night. After a day of racking pain, the sweating stage had reached him; his head was clear, the fever had left him, and he had been able to sup some of the game-broth that Thirlmere had prepared for him. He was now sleeping quietly.

At ten, Charlie heard the moaning roar of lions not far away. Shortly after followed the sharp, dissonant yells of the Mashonas from their hut, fifty yards distant. Lions were abroad, plainly. Thirlmere opened the hut door and fired a couple of cartridges, by way of scaring off the night prowlers. Then he lay down on his skin couch, pulled his blanket over him, and dozed off.

How soon afterwards it was he could never tell, but he was awakened in the black darkness by hearing some noise at the door of the hut. He picked up his loaded carbine, and went softly that way. Gently lifting the latch, he opened the door and peered out. Almost in the same instant, his left hand, which was thrust a little forward, was seized in the jaws of some savage creature, armed with frightful teeth. With a yell that leapt from rock to rock of the quiet valley, and seemed to split the very darkness, the unfortunate man lifted his carbine and belaboured the brute that held him fast, fiercely about the head. But the lion – for such it was – held on grimly, chewing, and crunching, and tugging hard at the hand now gripped so ruthlessly in those ferocious jaws. During this frightful struggle Thirlmere felt, curiously enough, little of actual physical pain. He was conscious of some sudden shock, just such as he remembered from a heavy fall in hunting; but, chiefly, his mind was concentrated in a determination to free himself at all hazards from his captor. He ceased hitting the brute with his carbine, and instinctively poked at the lion’s head with the muzzle end. Suddenly he encountered something soft. It was the brute’s eye. His forefinger slipped from the trigger-guard to the trigger itself and pulled. The bullet crashed deep into the lion’s brain, and upon the instant the fierce creature fell dead at his feet, dragging him to earth in its fall. Then his mind reeled into unconsciousness and he remembered no more.

Three minutes later, John Brightling, who had started from his bed of fever at the sound of Charlie’s yell and the report of the rifle, had lit a lantern, and was outside. He could scarcely believe his senses when he found, just beyond the doorway, the body of the dead lion, with his comrade’s senseless form lying across the grim beast’s forelegs, his left hand still imprisoned in that terrible grip.

Rousing the trembling natives from the adjacent hut, John, after some trouble, succeeded in prising open the huge teeth, forcing the jaws apart, and releasing the mangled hand – or rather, what remained of it. For the lion had bitten three parts of that member from the rest of the limb. They got Thirlmere into the hut; and then, while he lay still insensible, Brightling tied a ligature tightly round the wrist, trimmed off the ghastly wound, washed the poor maimed stump, and wrapped it in linen. Then he administered a stiff dose of brandy and water, and Thirlmere presently began to come round. In a little while he had pulled himself together wonderfully, and they discussed the situation. It would take two days at least to get the doctor from Salisbury; and they had no carbolic, meanwhile, to keep the wound sweet. What was to be done? A pot of liquid pitch stood in one corner of the hut. Into that they inserted the still bleeding stump, and bound up the wound again. It seemed the only thing to be done, rude and barbarous as was the precaution. At the first streak of dawn they despatched the fleetest among their native boys, with an urgent letter to Salisbury for help. Fired by the promise of two sovereigns on his return, the man set off at a steady jog-trot, vowing he would be in at the township that evening. By eleven o’clock next day Brightling was down again in a hot fit of malaria, while Charlie Thirlmere lay in his corner, feeling the fever of his wound coursing through his veins and mounting to his brain. Presently he wandered in a delirium; strange shapes and scenes passed before his distempered mind; his tongue rambled. He called incessantly for Sybil. So the two men lay: the hours passing on leaden wings.

And Sybil herself was near. For a month or two after her husband’s departure for Africa, she had led pretty much her old whirling life of pleasure and excitement. Then things began to pall a little, and she took breath and thought. After all, without Charlie, life seemed somehow different. She missed him in a thousand ways. Even Cecil Cloudesley began to seem empty and inane, and, after all, horseflesh and the society of smart people have their limitations. By the time Goodwood was reached Sybil had made up her mind. She had been chiefly to blame; she would try and do something for dear old Charlie, grinding in the hot sun, in some horribly uninteresting place, out there in Rhodesia. She sold off her ponies, gave up the flat, went down to her mother’s, and announced that she and her child had come to stay for six months. The stay resolved itself into much more than that period. A year and more went by; Sybil wrote often to Charlie, but, during his long absence towards the Zambesi, very few letters of his reached her. She became more and more uneasy, and presently, hearing at last that he had settled for a time near Salisbury, she determined to go out to him. Persuading her brother to accompany her, the pair sailed for Cape Town, trained thence to Mafeking (the then limit of the railway), and made their way by road to Salisbury. As fortune willed it, they reached that place early in December, and made preparations to take Charlie Thirlmere by storm. Their Cape cart and a buggy were loaded up with a supply of good things, and they were to start at daybreak next morning. Late that evening the Salisbury doctor came round to their hotel with a grave face. He had had serious news of Thirlmere by a native runner; an accident had happened; could he accompany them early next morning?

The matter was urgent; they set off with four horses in each trap, two hours before sun-up, and, travelling rapidly, reached Charlie Thirlmere’s hut soon after three o’clock. Right or wrong, Sybil could not, would not, be gainsaid. She slipped down, ran to the hut, and, standing at the open door, looked at her husband lying there, drawn, pale, and dishevelled, in the corner. All her heart leaped out to him. He was conscious, and knew her.

“Sybil!” he cried feebly. “Where in God’s name have you sprung from?”

“My darling old boy,” she returned, kneeling at his side, and kissing him tenderly, “it is I, surely enough, come to nurse you and get you well, and,” (she whispered in his ear) “never to let you go again, my husband.”

She kissed him again and again, and then the doctor came forward. It was a very near thing. Another dozen hours or so, and mortification would have set in. They amputated above the wrist, and, after a most anxious and most miserable time, pulled Charlie Thirlmere through towards Christmas. He lost his left hand, it is true; but, as he always says, it was cheap at the price of his subsequent happiness.

They sold the gold claims excellently well, and the Thirlmeres now live the happiest of lives in a pleasant English country home. No two married people can be more devoted, or faster friends and comrades. One of the most treasured mementoes of their African days stands in their big, cosy hall. It is the grim, white skull of the lion, whose grinning teeth so nearly ended Charlie Thirlmere’s existence.