Page 133 - Adventure Magazine, 1921, July 18th

128 Adventure

the mighty one, king of the forest, the super- Ordinarily lions seek cover, but this lion
tusker whose ivorie were a record. must have cursed it. It was at once too
Many men had, for his ivory, gone forth thick and useless. He had to go through it, 1
from time to time to shoot Tembo. Some and he did, shedding wisps of his really
had r turned. Some had-not returned. superb dark mane at every bound.
Tembo remained, a pow r in the land that Tembo, on the other hand, had not to go
no man or beast could leave out of reckon- through it, and he shed nothing, not even,
ing with safety. as the lion did, part of his speed. He went
The lion did not need to look round in over it, trampling it fl.at and behaving as if
order to "get wi e" about Tembo's approach he believed it was not there. Once he col-
in hi rear. Wild creatures become used to lided with a tree and the tree came down
keeping a lookout, when they cap not see, with a crash. ,
with nose and ears. He would certainly At this the lion turned. Like all the cats
have invited himself t:o a more healthy dis- he was only a sprinter-though a most sen-
tance if he could, but in the wild it is easier sational one-and his bolt was soon shot.
to get into a fight than to get out of it. The And, after all, he was a king. He seemed
moment of "breaking the clinch," so to to remember the fact in that hectic mom~nt,
speak, is often the fatal one. It may mean and halted proudly to do battle for his life.
expo ing an unguarded flank. The rest was ,confusion of a most stu-
Therefore, judging entirely by sound- pendous kind. Pen could not paint it; no
and Tembo made about as much noise as a artist in his senses would try ~ Besides, the
mad locomotive with all steam up-the dense bush hid most of it-all but the upper
lion side-stepped. Next instant he was half of Tembo's monstrous self and his
crashing, on his back and without touching trunk and tusk$ when they rose and fell.
the ground, int-0 a near-by bush. But the sounds! Ah, the noises-they
He did not know quite how he got ther.e. were enough! They were more than
The bush, however, like most bushes in enough. They were too much, and outside
Africa, had thorns-four-inch ones-and ~he a nightmare not possible to conceive.
knew that he was there. Tembo, in point At last, however, Tembo came back;
of fact, though he had missed and could not leisurely, as was his wont, slouching ca.re=;
stop, had flung him there in passing. lessly; silent as a great, great shadow. The
Then was seen-what always surprizes dying caldron of the ~un shone upon the
people whose experience with elephants is of angry red about his pillar-like legs. There
the museum or book variety-with what were marks as if a grapnel had fouled him
amazing ~gility even a big bull elephant . on his huge flanks, and the tips of his tusks
can move his vast bulk about. seemed to have been dipped in carmine.
Tembo, still with much weight on, slid But there was no lion; nowhere, by any
along in the ·trampled mud of the pool's kind of chance, was there any sign of a lion.
edge, almost ,in a sitting-down position·. He had literally gone back to the earth
He spun however, like a beetle on a pin whence he came--"dust to dust" , in very
and was towering over that fateful bush be- truth - stamped fl.at, a horror of horrors
fore you could say, "Knife!" even in a land of horrors, a "transfer" of a
beast, an impression in and upon his mother
THE lion's own marvelous quick- earth.
ness of movement we can take for Then you behold old Tembo leading that
granted. It was 'most like magic. fnmale elephant away; shouldering her
Wherefore, he was already going out of the along, noiseless as hi own enormous
far side of that bush when Tembo arrived shadow but quite, quite ma ter of the situ-
bn the near side of it. ation. The cow wa bleeding profusely,
Then-then there wasn't any, bush, only and the calf, trotting between his mother's
a flattened-out, trampled carpet of twigs forelegs, bor marks. None of them, in-
and thorns that might have been a bush, deed, fell quite a they had felt; but what
but was now litter. Fifty yards away the is that to an elephant? They can take. in
king of all the beasts was doing a most un- their stride, by way of "the daily round,
kingly sprint for his life, and Tembo, rock- the trivial task," and without turning any
ing like unto a ship in a heavy seaway, was of their few hairs, wounds that would fairly
reaching for Leo's tail. pulverize any other beast.