Assegai

After dinner that evening Kermit came to Leon’s tent. He brought with him a silver hip flask of Jack Daniel’s whiskey. They turned the lamp low, sat in the canvas chairs under the mosquito net and kept their voices to a whisper.

‘Andrew Fagan was the guest of honour this evening,’ Kermit told Leon. In response to Kermit’s invitation Fagan had arrived in camp during the afternoon. ‘He got on well with my father. The old man enjoyed having a new audience.’

They were silent for a few minutes, then Kermit went on, ‘I don’t grudge it to my father. He’s as keen as any of us to get good trophies, and he works like a man half his age. You weren’t there, of course, but I can tell you that he did rather overdo it at dinner tonight. He didn’t actually boast or gloat over me but he came damned close. Of course Fagan was lapping it all up.’

Leon studied the amber liquid in his glass and murmured sympathetically in agreement.

‘I mean it was a good lion, a fine lion, but it wasn’t the best lion anyone in Africa has ever taken, was it?’ Kermit asked earnestly.

‘You’re absolutely right. It was a very big-bodied lion, but its mane was a ruff. It wasn’t much bigger than a lady’s ostrich-feather boa,’ Leon assured him, and Kermit burst out laughing, then checked himself with a hand over his mouth. They were more than a hundred yards from the President’s tent, but the great man expected silence in camp after lights out.

‘A lady’s boa,’ Kermit repeated delightedly, then made an attempt at a feminine falsetto, ‘Are we off to the ballet, my darlings?’ They savoured the joke for a while and pulled at the Jack Daniel’s.

Then Kermit said, ‘Sometimes I almost hate my father. Does that make me evil?’

‘No, it makes you human.’

‘Tell me honestly, Leon, what did you really think of that lion?’

‘We can beat it.’

‘Do you think so? Do you honestly think so?’

‘Your father’s lion hasn’t a single black hair in its boa. Not one,’ he said, and Kermit had to smother another burst of laughter at the word ‘boa’. The Jack Daniel’s was warming his belly and lifting his spirits.

When his friend had controlled his mirth, Leon repeated, ‘We can beat it. We can get a bigger and blacker lion. Manyoro and Loikot are Masai. They have a special affinity with the big cats. They say we can do better, and I believe them.’

‘Tell me how we’re going to do it.’ Kermit gazed solemnly into his face.

‘We’ll make up a flying column and ride ahead of the main safari into the country beyond Masailand, where the lions haven’t been picked over for the last thousand years by the morani. We can move many times faster than the rest of them because they’re limited to the pace of the porters. In a few days we can have a lead of a hundred miles or more. When does the President plan to move on north, do you know?’

‘My father told us at dinner tonight that he plans to stay here for a while. It seems that a few days ago the local guides led him and Mr Selous to a large swamp about twenty miles east of here. Near it they found a set of tracks that Mr Selous believes may be those of a male sitatunga antelope, but they were larger than the species he himself discovered in 1881 in the Okavango delta. That one is named after him, Limnotragus selousi. He’s convinced my father that this may be an entirely new sub-species. To my father the opportunity of discovering a species previously unknown to science is irresistible. He dreams of a sitatunga named Limnotragus roosevelti. He would sacrifice his first-born for that.’ He grinned. ‘I expect he’ll want to hang around here until he finds this buck or convinces himself it doesn’t exist.’

‘I can understand his interest. What do you know about the sitatunga?’

‘Not much,’ Kermit admitted.

‘It’s a fascinating creature, very rare and elusive. It’s the only truly aquatic antelope. Its hoofs are so long and splayed that on land it can barely walk, but in deep mud or water it’s as agile as a catfish. When threatened it ducks under the surface and can remain submerged for hours with only the tips of its nostrils above the water.’

‘Hell, I’d love to get one of those,’ Kermit said.

‘You can’t have everything, chum. Lion or sitatunga, it’s your choice.’ Leon did not wait for a reply. ‘The President’s plans suit us well enough. We can leave them to it and ride on the day after tomorrow. Now, do you suppose there may be another noggin lingering at the bottom of that flask of yours? If there is, I don’t think we should let it go to waste, do you?’