In the early days, before we became good friends, he did not trust me at all. When anything came up he went into this blankness. I liked Charo much better then. We understood each other on the question of religion and Charo admired my shooting and always shook hands and smiled when we had killed anything particularly good. This was flattering and pleasing. M’Cola looked on all this early shooting as a series of lucky accidents. We were supposed to shoot. We had not yet shot anything that amounted to anything and he was not really my gun bearer. He was Mr. Jackson Phillip’s gun bearer and he had been loaned to me. I meant nothing to him. He did not like me nor dislike me. He was politely contemptuous of Karl. Who he liked was Mama.
The evening we killed the first lion it was dark when we came in sight of camp. The killing of the lion had been confused and unsatisfactory. It was agreed beforehand that P.O.M. should have the first shot but since it was the first lion any of us had ever shot at, and it was very late in the day, really too late to take the lion on, once he was hit we were to make a dogfight of it and anyone was free to get him. This was a good plan as it was nearly sundown and if the lion got into cover, wounded, it would be too dark to do anything about it without a mess. I remember seeing the lion looking yellow and heavy-headed and enormous against a scrubby looking tree in a patch of orchard bush and P.O.M. kneeling to shoot and wanting to tell her to sit down and make sure of him. Then there was the short-barrelled explosion of the Mannlicher and the lion was going to the left on a run, a strange, heavy-shouldered, foot-swinging, cat run. I hit him with the Springfield and he went down and spun over and I shot again, too quickly, and threw a cloud of dirt over him. But there he was, stretched out, on his belly, and, with the sun just over the top of the trees, and the grass very green, we walked up on him like a posse, or a gang of Black and Tans, guns ready and cocked, not knowing whether he was stunned or dead. When we were close M’Cola threw a stone at him. It hit him in the flank and from the way it hit you could tell he was a dead animal. I was sure P.O.M. had hit him but there was only one bullet hole, well back, just below the spine and ranging forward to come to the surface under the skin of the chest. You could feel the bullet under the skin and M’Cola made a slit and cut it out. It was a 220-grain solid bullet from the Springfield and it had raked him, going through lungs and heart.
I was so surprised by the way he had rolled over dead from the shot after we had been prepared for a charge, for heroics, and for drama, that I felt more let down than pleased. It was our first lion and we were very ignorant and this was not what we had paid to see. Charo and M’Cola both shook P.O.M.’s hand and then Charo came over and shook hands with me.
‘Good shot, B’wana,’ he said in Swahili. {‘Piga m’uzuri.’}
‘Did you shoot, Karl?’ I asked.
‘No. I was just going to when you shot.’
‘You didn’t shoot him, Pop?’
‘No. You’d have heard it.’ He opened the breech and took out the two big 450 No. 2’s.
‘I’m sure I missed him,’ P.O.M. said.
‘I was sure you hit him.. I still think you hit him,’ I said.
‘Mama hit,’ M’Cola said.
‘Where?’ Charo asked.
‘Hit,’ said M’Cola. ‘Hit.’
‘You rolled him over,’ Pop said to me. ‘God, he went over like a rabbit.’
‘I couldn’t believe it.’
‘Mama {piga,’} M’Cola said. {”Piga Simba.’}
As we saw the camp fire in the dark ahead of us, coming in that night, M’Cola suddenly commenced to shout a stream of high-pitched, rapid, singing words in Wakamba ending in the word {‘Simb}a{‘}. Someone at the camp shouted back one word. D 47