2

Four months later. The end of March.

A branch line was under construction, connecting to the main Mombasa–Kisumu railway on the shores of Lake Victoria Nyanza. The site was three hundred and fifty miles west of Mombasa, and seventy-two miles southwest of the Uganda Railway’s Noodsberg station. Shankar had come here as a clerk and assistant storekeeper for the construction camp. He lived in a small tent. Around him were many others; no proper houses had been built yet, so everyone lived under canvas. The tents were arranged in a circle in a clearing, surrounded by a vast, open plain stretching far into the distance, covered in long grass and dotted with occasional trees. Right at the edge of the clearing, just beside the tents, stood a large baobab. It was Africa’s famous tree; Shankar had seen it so many times in pictures, but now, seeing a real baobab, he couldn’t seem to get his fill of it.

It was a new country, and Shankar’s mind was young and fresh. In the solitary fields and forests of Uganda, he felt he had found the fulfillment of his dreams. As soon as his work was done, he would leave his tent and set out walking, wherever his eyes might lead him—east, west, south, north. In every direction, there was long grass, sometimes as high as a man’s head, sometimes even higher.

One day, the engineer in charge of the pre-construction camp called Shankar over. “Listen, Ray,” he said, “don’t go wandering around like that. Don’t take a single step out here without a gun. First, you could get lost in this grassland. People have died in places like this, from lack of water, after losing their way. Second, this is lion country. All our noise and the hammering might have driven them off a little way, but you can’t trust them. Be very careful. These parts aren’t safe at all.”

One afternoon, with work in full swing, the cry of a human voice in agony was suddenly heard from the tall grass some distance from the tents. Everyone rushed in that direction to see what was happening. Shankar ran too. The grassland was searched high and low, but there was nothing there.

Whose scream was it, then?

The engineer arrived. The roll was called for the labourers, and it was found that one of them was absent. Upon inquiry, it turned out that he had gone into the grasslands a little earlier on some errand; no one had seen him return.

While they were searching, a few lion paw prints were found in the sand at the edge of the grassy thicket. Taking a rifle, the engineer, accompanied by some men, followed the tracks a long way until, behind a large rock, they discovered the bloody body of the unfortunate labourer.

He was carried back to the camp, but there was no sign of the lion. The shouts of the men must have made it abandon its prey and flee. The labourer died before evening.

The very next day, the long grass around the camp was cut and cleared for a good distance. For some days, the only topic of conversation in the camp was the lion. Then, a month or so later, the incident grew old, and the memory of it faded from everyone’s minds. Work went on as usual.

The day had been very hot, but it turned cool soon after sunset. In front of the labourers’ tents, a fire had been lit with a great pile of wood and kindling. Everyone from the camp was sitting around it in a circle, chatting. Shankar was there too, listening to their talk and reading the Kenya Morning News by the light of the flames. The newspaper was five days old, but here in this desolate wilderness, it was still the only source of news from the outside world.

Shankar had struck up a firm friendship with a Madrasi clerk named Tirumal Appa. Tirumal was a young man, knew English well, and was full of enthusiasm. Driven by a thirst for adventure, he had run away from home. Sitting beside Shankar, he had been talking incessantly since evening about his home, his parents, his younger sister. He loved his little sister dearly. Now that he had left home, it was she he thought of most. He wanted to go back home for a visit at the end of September. Would the sahib grant him two months’ leave?

The night grew deeper. The fire would occasionally die down, and the labourers would throw more wood on it. Many of the others got up and went to bed. A waning crescent moon slowly appeared on the far horizon, casting a play of light and shadow across the entire plain, and the long, drawn-out silhouettes of wild trees.

Shankar was struck by the strange beauty of this silent night in a far-off foreign land. Leaning against a post of the labourers’ shelter, he gazed intently at the light-and-shadow-dappled face of the vast, empty grassland before him, his mind filled with countless thoughts. Beyond that baobab tree, the frontiers of an unknown country stretched all the way to Cape Town—and in between lay so many mountains and forests, the prehistoric city of Zimbabwe, the vast and terrifying Kalahari Desert, the land of diamonds, the land of gold mines!

A great gold-prospector was walking along when he stumbled and fell. The stone he had tripped on—he picked it up and examined it closely, and saw that it was mixed with gold. A huge gold mine was discovered on that very spot. He had read so many stories like this back home.

This was that Africa, that continent of mystery, of gold, of diamonds—how many unknown peoples, unknown sights, unknown creatures lay hidden in its boundless tropical forests? Who had kept count?

Lost in his thoughts, Shankar had fallen asleep at some point. Suddenly, a sound woke him. He sat up with a start. The moon was high in the sky now. The brilliant white moonlight was as clear as day. The fire in the pit had gone out. The labourers were all curled up, sleeping on top of the embers. There was not a sound from any direction.

Suddenly, Shankar’s gaze fell to his side—this was where Tirumal Appa had been sitting and talking with him! Where was he? He must have gone to sleep inside the tent.

Shankar was getting up to go to bed himself when, a short distance away to the west, he heard the terrifying roar of a lion out on the plain. In the dim moonlight of the night, the very tents seemed to tremble at the sound. The labourers woke with a jolt. The engineer came out of his tent with his rifle. It was the first time in his life Shankar had heard a lion’s roar—and in that moonlit, trackless grassland in the dead of night, that roar stirred in his mind an indescribable feeling! It wasn’t fear; it was a mysterious and complex emotion. There was an old Maasai labourer in the camp. He said, “The lion has killed a man. It wouldn’t roar like that unless it had killed.”

Just then, Tirumal’s tent-mate came out and announced that Tirumal’s bed was empty. He was nowhere in the tent.

Everyone was stunned by the news. Shankar went into the tent himself and saw that it was indeed empty. At once, the labourers lit torches and went out with their sticks. All the tents were searched; they all called out his name together—but there was no response from Tirumal.

They then took a closer look at the spot where Tirumal had been sleeping. The marks of something heavy being dragged were clearly visible on the ground. It didn’t take anyone long to understand what had happened. Near the baobab tree, a scrap from the sleeve of Tirumal’s shirt was found. The engineer went ahead with his rifle, Shankar walking with him. The labourers followed. In the deep of that night, they searched a wide area of the plain, far from the tents, but no trace of Tirumal’s body was found. The lion roared again, but this time from a distance. It was like the hideous shriek of some mysterious ogress, the presiding deity of this desolate plain.

The Maasai labourer said, “The lion is carrying the body away. But this one will give us trouble. It won’t stop until it’s taken many more men. Everyone be careful. A lion that has once started eating humans becomes extremely cunning.”

It was three in the morning when they all returned to the camp. The whole plain was lit by the bright, clear moonlight. In this part of Africa, one rarely saw birds during the day, but at night one could hear the call of a kind of nocturnal bird—its song was of an unearthly sweetness. Just then, that bird called out from the top of some distant tree. In an instant, it made the heart ache with a sense of desolation. Shankar did not go to sleep. Everyone else went to bed in their tents, for no one had been spared the exertion. A huge fire was lit with wood and kindling in front of the tents. Of course, Shankar did not dare sit outside—there was no point in such foolhardiness. But lying in his own straw hut, he gazed through the window at the vast, moonlit, unknown plain.

What a strange feeling came over him! Perhaps it was for this that Tirumal’s destiny had drawn him to Africa. As for himself, who knew what his own destiny had brought him here for?

Africa was strangely beautiful—but Africa was terrifying! It might look like the acacia-filled fields of Bengal, but Africa was fraught with unknown death. The cruel trap of sudden death lay hidden everywhere… no one could say at this moment what might happen in the next.

Africa had claimed its first sacrifice—the young Hindu, Tirumal. It demanded blood.

Tirumal was gone, and from the very next day, the situation in the camp became such that it was impossible to stay there because of the lion’s menace. A man-eating lion is a most terrible animal. It is as cunning as it is bold. Forget evening, one could not go far alone even in broad daylight. Before sunset, large fires were lit at various spots in the camp field; the labourers would sit close to the flames, telling stories, cooking, and eating their meals right there. At night, the engineer would patrol around the tents three or four times with his rifle, firing blank shots—yet despite all these precautions, a labourer was taken by the lion just two days after Tirumal’s death, in the early evening. The next day, a Somali labourer went to break stones on a rocky mound three hundred yards from the camp in the afternoon—he did not return that evening.

That very night, after ten o’clock, Shankar was returning from the engineer’s tent. There was hardly anyone outside; people had gone to bed early in their own quarters. All that remained were a few dying fires here and there. In the distance, jackals were howling. The sound of jackals always made Shankar feel he was in a Bengal village—he would try to picture his own village with his eyes closed, to picture the hog plum tree in the corner of their house. Tonight, too, he stopped for a moment and quickly shut his eyes.

How wonderful it felt! Where was he? Lying on the cot by the window in their village house? If he opened his eyes, would he see the branches of the hog plum tree? Was that right? Should he open his eyes and see?

Shankar slowly opened his eyes.

A dark plain. In the distance, the large baobab tree stood like a giant in the faint darkness. Suddenly, he felt that something was moving on top of a low, round, umbrella-like thatched roof in front of him. The next moment, he was paralyzed with fear and astonishment.

A huge lion was trying to claw a hole in the thatched roof, and every now and then, it would bring its nose to the hole and sniff at something.

The hut was at most twenty yards away from him.

Shankar understood that he was in terrible danger. The lion was busy scratching a hole in the thatch to get inside and take a man—it hadn’t seen Shankar yet. There was no one outside the tents; no one stayed out late for fear of the lion. He himself was completely unarmed, without so much as a stick in his hand.

Keeping his eyes on the lion, Shankar began to back away silently towards the engineer’s tent. One minute… two minutes… Shankar had never known before that he had such control over his nerves. Not a single sound of fear escaped his lips, nor did he make any attempt to suddenly turn and run.

Lifting the flap of the engineer’s tent, he went inside and saw the sahib still at his desk, working. Before the sahib, surprised by his appearance, could ask anything, he said, “Sahib, a lion!…”

The sahib leaped to his feet. “Where? Where is it?”

There was a .375 Mannlicher rifle on the gun rack—the sahib took it down. He gave another rifle to Shankar. The two of them lifted the tent flap and stepped out slowly. A short distance away was the round hut of the coolie lines. But where was the lion on the roof? Shankar pointed and said, “I just saw it, sir. On that roof, the lion was clawing at the thatch.”

“It’s fled,” the sahib said. “Wake everyone up.”

A little later, a great commotion broke out in the camp. The labourers came out in a shouting crowd with sticks, spears, pickaxes, and mallets—they searched everywhere. A hole was indeed found in the thatched roof. Lion paw prints were also found. But the lion had vanished. More wood and dry straw were thrown onto the fires, and they were stoked up again. Not many slept well that night, but no one stayed outside the tents for long either. Towards the end of the night, Shankar, lying in his own tent, had dozed off a little—he was woken by a huge uproar. The Maasai labourers were shouting, “Simba! Simba!” Two gunshots rang out. Shankar came out of his tent and asked what had happened. He learned that a lion had just come and mauled one of the pack mules in the stable. Everyone had been nodding off in the late hours, and that’s when it had happened.

The next day, at dusk, a young labourer was taken by the lion from within a hundred yards of the camp. Four days later, another labourer was taken from under the baobab tree.

None of the labourers wanted to work anymore. The men with pickaxes on the long line often had to work in very small groups—they didn’t want to go far from the camp even during the day. And it wasn’t safe to stay inside the tents at night either. Fear was in everyone’s heart—each one thought it was his turn next. There was no telling who would be taken when. No work could be done in these conditions. Only the Maasai labourers remained unflustered—they did not fear Death himself. It was they who did the pickaxe work two miles from the camp; the sahib, rifle in hand, would go to check on them four or five times a day.

Many new arrangements were made, but nothing lessened the lion’s menace. Despite many attempts, the lion could not be hunted. Many said there was more than one lion—“How many can we kill?” The sahib said, “There are not many man-eaters. This is the work of a single lion.”

One day, the sahib called Shankar and asked him to take a rifle and go check on the pickaxe-wielding labourers. Shankar said, “Sahib, give me your Mannlicher.”

The sahib agreed. Shankar took the rifle and set off on a mule. About a mile from the camp was a small waterhole. When Shankar caught sight of the waterhole from a distance, it was nearly three in the afternoon. There was no one in sight; the scorching sun was creating heat shimmers across the plain.

Suddenly, the mule stopped dead in its tracks. It refused to go any further. Shankar felt that the mule was afraid to go towards that place. A little later, something stirred in the nearby bushes. But looking in that direction, he could see nothing. He dismounted from the mule. Still, the mule wouldn’t budge.

Suddenly, a jolt like electricity ran through Shankar’s body. Could a lion be lying in wait for him in the bushes? He knew this often happened; a lion would hide in the thickets by the path and silently follow its prey for a long distance. In a deserted spot, when the opportunity arose, it would leap on its victim’s neck. What if that was the case? Shankar decided it was not wise to go any further with the mule. He thought he should go back to the camp. He had just turned the mule’s head towards the camp when something moved in the bushes again. At the same time, there was a terrible lion’s roar, and a huge, grey body came crashing down onto the mule. Shankar was about four hands’ lengths ahead at that point. He immediately turned and, raising his rifle, fired twice in quick succession. It was impossible to tell if the bullets had hit, but by then the mule had collapsed on the ground—the grey animal had fled. Shankar examined the mule and saw that a large chunk of flesh near its shoulder was torn to shreds; the ground was soaked with blood. It was thrashing about in agony. Shankar put an end to its suffering with a single shot.

Then he returned to the camp. The sahib said, “The lion must be wounded. If a bullet from that rifle hits it, it must be seriously wounded. But did you hit it?” Shankar said he couldn’t say whether the bullets had hit or not. He had fired the gun, that was all. Despite a search with a party of men for two or three days, no wounded or dead lion was found anywhere.

The rains began in the first week of June. Partly because of the lion’s menace, and partly because the proximity of the marshland made it unhealthy, the camp was moved from that location.

Shankar did not have to stay with the construction camp any longer. He got a job as stationmaster at a small station about thirty miles from Kisumu and moved there with his belongings.