Assegai

Leon sent Manyoro and Loikot off to some distant villages outside the boundaries of Masailand. Their task was to recruit porters to carry the ivory to the railway. They had to be from some tribe other than Masai, for the morani would not stoop to such menial employment. Leon and Ishmael camped for the following five days at a discreet distance upwind from the putrefying carcass, its belly swelling with gas. They guarded the tusks while they waited for them to loosen with rot in their bone canals.

The nights were raucous as the scavengers gathered. Jackals yipped and packs of hyena giggled, shrieked and squabbled among themselves. On the third night the lions arrived and added their imperial roaring to the general cacophony. Ishmael spent the hours of darkness perched in the top branches of one of the ngong trees, reciting verses from the Koran in Kiswahili and calling on Allah for protection from these demons.

On the sixth day Manyoro and Loikot returned, followed by a gang of stalwart Luo porters whom Manyoro had hired for ten shillings.

‘Ten shillings a day each?’ Leon was aghast at such profligacy. Ten shillings was almost the sum of his worldly wealth.

‘Nay, Bwana, for all of them.’

‘Ten shillings a day for all six?’ Leon was only slightly mollified.

‘Nay, Bwana. It is for all six to carry the tusks to the railway, no matter how many days it takes.’

‘Manyoro, your mother should be proud of you,’ Leon told him with relief. ‘I certainly am.’ He led the porters to where the remains of the carcass lay. Only the great bones and the hide had not been dragged away and devoured by the scavengers. The head was still propped upright by the two curves of ivory. Leon looped a length of bark rope around one of the tusks and the Luo porters sang a work chant as they heaved on the line. The butt end of the tusk, which had been buried in the skull, slid out of its canal with little resistance. Until then almost half its length had been hidden and now the true dimensions were revealed for the first time. When they laid the two tusks side by side on a bed of fresh green leaves Leon was amazed by their length and lovely symmetry. Once again he used the barrels of his rifle as a gauge to measure them. The longest of the two was a hand’s breadth over eleven feet and the lesser was almost exactly eleven feet.

Under Manyoro’s direction the Luo cut two long poles of acacia wood and strapped each tusk to one. With a porter at each end they lifted the poles and started towards the railway, the remainder of the team trotting behind them, ready to spell them as they tired.

Leon was no longer entitled to a military travel pass, so on the steepest stretch of the railway, where it climbed up the escarpment from the floor of the Rift Valley, they waited for the night train from Lake Victoria. Here, even the double team of locomotives was reduced to walking speed. Under cover of darkness they ran along-side one of the goods trucks until they could catch hold of the steel ladder and clamber onto the roof. The Luo porters passed the tusks and Ishmael’s bundle up to them. Leon tossed a canvas purse of shillings down to the headman and the porters shouted thanks and farewells until they were left in the darkness behind the guard’s van. The locomotives puffed gamely to the top of the escarpment. The truck on which they were perched was filled with baskets of dried fish from the lake, but as the train picked up speed the stink was wafted away.

It was still dark when they dropped the tusks and their baggage over the side of the truck and jumped from the rolling train as it slowed before steaming into Nairobi station.

Percy Phillips was eating his breakfast in the mess tent when they staggered into Tandala Camp, bowed under the weight of the tusks.

‘Upon my soul!’ he spluttered into his coffee, and knocked over his chair as he sprang to his feet. ‘Those aren’t yours, are they?’

‘One is.’ Leon kept a straight face. ‘Unfortunately, sir, the other is yours.’

‘Take them to the beam scale. Let’s see what we have here,’ Percy ordered.

The entire staff of the camp trooped after them to the ski

‘One hundred and twenty-eight pounds,’ said Percy, noncommittally. ‘Now let’s try the other.’

Leon hoisted the second into the sling and Percy blinked. ‘One hundred and thirty-eight.’ His voice cracked just a little. It was the largest tusk that had ever been brought into Tandala Camp. However, he could think of no good reason why the youngster should be told so. Don’t want him to get too big for his boots, he thought, as he scratched his beard. Then he said to Manyoro, ‘Put both tusks into the truck.’ At last he looked at Leon and his eyes twinkled. ‘All right, young fella, you can drive me in to the club. I’m about to buy you a drink.’

As the vehicle bounced and rattled over the track, Percy had to raise his voice to be heard above the racket of the engine. ‘Rightyho! Tell me all about it. Start at the begi

‘That isn’t the begi

‘It will do as a starting point. You can work backwards from there. How many shots?’

‘One brain shot. And then I remembered your advice and put in a finisher when he was down.’

Percy nodded his approval. ‘Now tell me the rest.’ As he listened, Percy was impressed with Leon’s account of the hunt. He made it sound fascinating, even to Percy who had lived it all a hundred times. One of the most important duties of a white hunter was to entertain his clients. They wanted more than simply to mow down a few animals: they were paying a fortune to take part in an unforgettable adventure and wanted to be taken out of their cosseted urban existence and led back to their primeval begi

This lad did not fall into that category. He was willing and eager. He was modest, charming and tactful. He was articulate. He had a quirky, dry sense of humour. He was personable. People liked him. Percy smiled inwardly. Hell, even I like him.

When they reached the club Percy made him park directly in front of the main doors. He led Leon into the long bar where a dozen regulars, most of them living on remittances sent from their families in England, had already taken their seats. ‘Gentlemen,’ Percy addressed the congregation, ‘I want you to meet my new apprentice, and then I’m going to take you outside and show you a pair of tusks. And I do mean a pair of tusks!’

When they trooped out to the front of the building they found that the news had already flashed through the town, and a small crowd was gathered around the truck. Percy invited them all into the bar.

By the time Hugh Delamere limped into the bar on the leg that had been chewed years ago by a lion, the proceedings were noisy. This was a state of affairs much to his lordship’s liking. As was the case with so many English public-school boys, Delamere enjoyed boisterous games that resulted in broken furniture and other peripheral damage. This evening he was accompanied by Colonel Penrod Ballantyne. They congratulated Leon on his prowess as a hunter, and Delamere poured him a large Talisker whisky from his private stock, which he kept under the bar. Then he challenged uncle and nephew to a game of High Cockalorum, which involved a race around the large room without touching the floor. At one stage the shelves behind the bar were unable to bear his lordship’s weight and collapsed in a crash of breaking bottles. Just before midnight one of the club residents came into the bar to complain of the noise. His lordship locked him into the wine cellar for the rest of the night.