Part 19 (2/2)
Within a few hours his confidence in life was restored He accepted s us intently, retired and examined them As they all proved desirable, he rapidly cae ile as his own people, were nevertheless a good sort after all
Therefore he took us into his confidence By next day he was quite ta, and had ceased trying to take an end off our various fingers In fact when the finger was presented, he would seize it in both sive it severalit with all four hands, would draw hiht on the outspread pal up his tiny brow
This chastened and scholarly attitude of mind lasted for four or five days Then Funny Face concluded that he understood all about it, had settled satisfactorily to himself all the problems of the world and his relations to it, and had arrived at a good working basis for life
Therefore these questions ceased to occupy hiave hiht-hearted frivolity
His disposition was flighty but full of elusive charm You deprecated his lack of serious purpose in life, disapproved heartily of his irresponsibility, but you fell to his engaging qualities He was a typical exa retained his attention for two consecutive minutes If he seized a nut and started for his chop box with it, the chances were he would drop it and forget all about it in the interest excited by a crawling ant or the colour of a flower His elfish face was always alight with the play of ereatly given to starting off on very iot before he arrived
In this he contrasted strangely with his friend Darwin Daras another ht about a week later Darwin's face was sober and pondering, and his methods direct and effective No side excursions into the brilliant though evanescent fields of fancy diverted hiet the most and best food and the warmest corner for sleep When he had acquired a nut, a kernel of corn, or a piece of fruit, he sat hihly and conscientiously and then, conscientiously and thoroughly, he devoured it No extraneous interest could distract his attention; not for a moment That he had sounded the seriousness of life is proved by the fact that he had observed and understood the flighty character of Funny Face When Funny Face acquired a titbit, Darwin took up a huht little eyes fixed on his friend's activities Funny Face would nibble relishi+ngly at his prune for abutterfly would flitter by just overhead Funny Face, lost in ecstasy would gaze skyward after the departing marvel This was Darwin's opportunity In two hops he was at Funny Face's side With great deliberation, but ed Funny Face's unresisting fingers from the prune, seized it, and retired Funny Face never knew it; his soul was far away after the blazoned wonder, and when it returned, it was not to prunes at all They were forgotten, and his wandering eye focussed back to a bright button in the grass Thus by strict attention to business did Darwin prosper
Darwin's attitude was always serious, and his expression grave When he condescended to romp with Funny Face one could see that it was not for the mere joy of sport, but for the purposes of relaxation If offered a gift he always exa it over and over in his hands, and considering it rinkled brow If you offered anything to Funny Face, no matter what, he dashed up, seized it on the fly, departed at speed uttering grateful low chatterings; probably dropped and forgot it in the excite new before he had even looked to see what it was
”These people,” said Darwin to hiive ifts To be sure, it is alell to see that they don't try to bunco me with olive stones or such worthless trash, but still I believe they are worth cultivating and standing in with”
”It strikes me,” observed Funny Face to himself, ”that my adorable Memsahib and h I don't remember precisely how But I certainly do love theood sized holes on each of the four sides of their chop box to afford them ventilation on the march The box was always carried on one of the safari boy's heads: and Funny Face and Darwin gazed forth with great interest It was very a under his light burden; the large broinking eyes glued to two of the apertures When we arrived in camp and threw the box cover open, they hopped forth, shook thes and proceeded to take a little exercise When anything alar hawk, they skittered ht-tent pole, tree, or hunantly or chittered in a low tone according to the degree of their terror When Funny Face was very young, indeed, the grass near caht fire After the excitement was over we found him completely buried in the straw of his box, crouched, and whie, have had any previous experience with fire, this instinctive fear was to enuine enemy That was an innocent plush lion naiven us in joke before we left California, we had tucked it into an odd corner of our trunk, had discovered it there, carried it on safari out of sheer idleness, and lo! it had beco Mahomet or Yusuf packed it-or rather him-carefully away in the tin box
Promptly at the end of the day's march Little Simba was haled forth and set in a place of honour in the centre of the table, and reigned there-or sole constructed by his faithful servitors-until the ain resu luck When he failed to get us anted, he was punished; when he procured us e desired he was rewarded by having his tail sewed on afresh, or by being presented with new black thread whiskers, or even a tiny blanket of Mericani against the cold This last was an especial favour for finally getting us the greater kudu
Naturally as we did all this in the spirit of an idle joke our rewards and punishments were rather desultory To our surprise, however, we soon found that our boys took Little Simba quite seriously He was a fetish, a little God, a power of good or bad luck We did not appreciate this point until one evening, after a rather disappointing day, Maho Little Simba in his hand
”Bwana,” said he respectfully, ”is it enough that I shut Si hi rong, we plucked Little Sih throne and with hirass There, in a loud tone of voice, we sternly bade hiiven to every people to treat its Gods in such fashi+on: indeed, in very deed, great is the white race, we should publish also Little Simba's triumph: to tell how, at the end of a certain very lucky three months' safari he was perched atop a pole and carried into town triu procession of a hundredretired froe a the trophies he helped to procure
Funny Face firsttour
With considerable difficulty he had shi+nnied up the table leg, and had hoisted hie When al affairs displayed atop, he looked straight up into the face of Little Sio all holds and fell off flat on his back Recovering ih as he could, and proceeded, during the next hour, to relieve his feelings by the rimaces He never recovered from this initial experience All that was necessary to evoke all sorts of ainst his benign plush front then broke a storm of remonstrance
He beca retreats, that lasted just as long as he stayed there, and never got any farther than a certain quite conservative point Little Si a God
XXIV BUFFALO
The Cape Buffalo is one of the four dangerous kinds of African big game; of which the other three are the lion, the rhinoceros, and the elephant
These latter are fah the African and larger form of the rhinoceros and elephant are seldom or never seen in captivity But buffaloes are as yet unrepresented in our living collections They are huge beasts, treht, in mass, or in power At the shoulder they stand froht; they are short legged, heavy bodied bull necked, thick in every diray as to skin; so that the individual impression depends on the thickness of the coat They wear their horns parted in the reat bosses either side the head A good trophy will measure in spread from forty inches to four feet Four men will be required to carry in the head alone As buffaloes when disturbed or suspicious have a habit of thrusting their noses up and forward, that position will cling to one's reat erous beasts
This is not h He possesses the size, power, and truculence of the rhinoceros, together with all that ani but with a sharpness of vision the rhinoceros has not While not as clever as either the lion or the elephant, he is tricky enough when angered to circle back for the purpose of attacking his pursuers in the rear or flank, and to arrange rather ingenious ambushes for the same purpose
He is rather more tenacious of life than the rhinoceros, and will carry away an extraordinary quantity of big bullets Add to these considerations the facts that buffaloes go in herds; and that, barring luck, chances are about even they will have to be followed into the thickest cover, it can readily be seen that their pursuit is exciting
The proble to slip into the thicket or up to the grazing herd and kill the nearest beast that offers As a matter of fact an ordinary herd will contain only two or three bulls worth shooting; and it is the hunter's delicate task to glide and crawl here and there, with due regard for sight, scent and sound, until he has picked one of these from the scores of undesirables
Many tireat black bodies half defined in the screen of thick undergrowth only to find that he has stalked cows or sain, unable to see twenty yards to either side, guiding himself by the probabilities of the faint chance breezes in the thicket To right and left he hears the quiet continued crop, crop, crop, sound of ani The sweat runs down his face in streams, and blinds his eyes, but only occasionally and with the utmost caution can he raise his hand-or, better, lower his head-to clear his vision When at last he has withdrawn froer zone, he wipes his face, takes a drink froain Sooner or later his presence comes to the notice of some old cow Behind the leafy screen where unsuspected she has been standing co crash!+
Instantly the jungle all about roars into life The great bodies of the alarh the thicket, s! crash!+