‘Absolutely,’ Robert Sanford said. ‘I’ll put the gramophone out here on the veranda and then those tremendous chords can go booming out through the night over the plain. It’s terrific. The only trouble is I have to wind the thing up twice for each side.’
‘I’ll wind it for you,’ I said.
Suddenly, the voice of a man yelling in Swahili exploded into the quiet of the evening. It was my boy, Mdisho. ‘Bwana! Bwana! Bwana!’ he was yelling from somewhere behind the house. ‘Simba, bwana! Simba! Simba!’
Simba is Swahili for lion. All three of us leapt to our feet, and the next moment Mdisho came tearing round the corner of the house yelling at us in Swahili, ‘Come quick, bwana! Come quick! Come quick! A huge lion is eating the wife of the cook!’
That sounds pretty funny when you put it on paper back here in England, but to us, standing on a veranda in the middle of East Africa, it was not funny at all.
Robert Sanford flew into the house and came out again in five seconds flat holding a powerful rifle and ramming a cartridge into the breech. ‘Get those children indoors!’ he shouted to his wife as he ran down off the veranda with me behind him.
Mdisho was dancing about and pointing towards the back of the house and yelling in Swahili, ‘The lion has taken the wife of the cook and the lion is eating her and the cook is chasing the lion and trying to save his wife!’
The servants lived in a series of low whitewashed outbuildings at the back of the house, and as we came running round the corner we saw four or five house-boys leaping about and pointing and shrieking, ‘Simba! Simba! Simba!’ The boys were all clothed in spotless white cotton robes that looked like long night-shirts, and each had a fine scarlet tarboosh on his head. The tarboosh is a sort of top-hat without a brim, and there is often a black tassel on it. The women had come out of their huts as well and were standing in a separate group, silent, immobile and staring.
‘Where is it?’ Robert Sanford shouted, but he had no need to ask, for we very quickly spotted the massive sandy-coloured lion not more than eighty or ninety yards off and trotting away from the house. He had a fine bushy collar of fur around his neck, and in his jaws he was holding the wife of the cook. The lion had the woman by the waist so that her head and arms hung down on one side and her legs on the other, and I could see that she was wearing a red and white spotted dress. The lion, so startlingly close, was loping away from us in the calmest possible manner with a slow, long-striding, springy lope, and behind the lion, not more than the length of a tennis court behind, ran the cook himself in his white cotton robe and with his red hat on his head, running most bravely and waving his arms like a whirlwind, leaping, clapping his hands, screaming, shouting, shouting, shouting, ‘Simba! Simba! Simba! Simba! Let go of my wife! Let go of my wife!’
Oh, it was a scene of great tragedy and comedy both mixed up together, and now Robert Sanford was running full speed after the cook who was running after the lion. He was holding his rifle in both hands and shouting to the cook, ‘Pingo! Pingo! Get out of the way, Pingo! Lie down on the ground so I c
an shoot the simba! You are in my way! You are in my way, Pingo!’
But the cook ignored him and kept on running, and the lion ignored everybody, not altering his pace at all but continuing to lope along with slow springy strides and with the head held high and carrying the woman proudly in his jaws, rather like a dog who is trotting off with a good bone.
Both the cook and Robert Sanford were travelling faster than the lion who really didn’t seem to care about his pursuers at all. And as for me, I didn’t know what to do to help them so I ran after Robert Sanford. It was an awkward situation because there was no way that Robert Sanford could take a shot at the lion without risking a hit on the cook’s wife, let alone on the cook himself who was still right in his line of fire.
The lion was heading for one of those hillocks that was densely covered with jungle trees and we all knew that once he got in there, we would never be able to get at him. The incredibly brave cook was actually catching up on the lion and was now not more than ten yards behind him, and Robert Sanford was thirty or forty yards behind the cook. ‘Ayee!’ the cook was shouting. ‘Simba! Simba! Simba! Let go my wife! I am coming after you, simba!’
Then Robert Sanford stopped and raised his rifle and took aim, and I thought surely he is not risking a shot at a moving lion when it’s got a woman in its jaws. There was an almighty crack as the big gun went off and I saw a spurt of dust just ahead of the lion. The lion stopped dead and turned his head, still holding the woman in his jaws. He saw the arm-waving shouting cook and he saw Robert Sanford and he saw me and he had certainly heard the rifle shot and seen the spurt of dust. He must have thought an army was coming after him because instantaneously he dropped the cook’s wife on to the ground and broke for cover. I have never seen anything accelerate so fast from a standing start. With great leaping bounding strides he was in among the jungle trees on the hillock before Robert Sanford could ram another cartridge into his gun.
The cook reached the wife first, then Robert Sanford, then me. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I was certain that the grip of those terrible jaws would have ripped the woman’s waist and stomach almost in two, but there she was sitting up on the ground and smiling at the cook, her husband.
‘Where are you hurt?’ shouted Robert Sanford, rushing up.
The cook’s wife looked up at him and kept smiling, and she said in Swahili, ‘That old lion he couldn’t scare me. I just lay there in his mouth pretending I was dead and he didn’t even bite through my clothes.’ She stood up and smoothed down her red and white spotted dress which was wet with the lion’s saliva, and the cook embraced her and the two of them did a little dance of joy in the twilight out there on the great brown African plain.
Robert Sanford just stood there gaping at the cook’s wife. So, for that matter, did I.
‘Are you absolutely sure the simba didn’t hurt you?’ he asked her. ‘Did not his teeth go into your body?’
‘No, bwana,’ the woman said, laughing. ‘He carried me as gently as if I had been one of his own cubs. But now I shall have to wash my dress.’
We walked slowly back to the group of astonished onlookers. ‘Tonight’, Robert Sanford said, addressing them all, ‘nobody is to go far from the house, you understand me?’
‘Yes, bwana,’ they said. ‘Yes, yes, we understand you.’
‘That old simba is hiding over there in the wood and he may come back,’ Robert Sanford said. ‘So be very careful. And Pingo, please continue to cook our dinner. I am getting hungry.’
The cook ran into the kitchen, clapping his hands and leaping for joy. We walked over to where Mary Sanford was standing. She had come round to the back of the house soon after us and had witnessed the whole scene. The three of us then returned to the veranda and fresh drinks were poured.
Dar es Salaam
5 June 1939
Dear Mama,
It’s pleasant lying back and listening to and at the same time watching the antics of Hitler and Mussolini who are invariably on the ceiling catching flys and mosquitoes. Hitler & Mussolini are 2 lizards which live in our sitting room. They’re always here, and apart from being very useful about the house they are exciting to watch. You can see Hitler (who is smaller than Musso and not so fat) fixing his unfortunate victim – often a small moth – with a very hypnotic eye. The moth, terrified, stays stock still, then suddenly, so quickly that you can hardly see the movement at all, he darts his neck forward, shoots out a long tongue, and that’s the end of the moth. They’re quite small only about 10 inches long, and they’ve taken on the colour of the walls & ceiling which are yellow & become quite transparent. You can see their appendixes, at least we think we can …
‘I don’t believe anything like this has ever happened before,’ Robert Sanford said as he sat down once again in his cane armchair. There was a little round slot in one of the arms of the chair to carry his glass and he put the whisky and soda carefully into it. ‘In the first place,’ he went on, ‘lions do not attack people around here unless you go near their cubs. They can get all the food they want. There’s plenty of game on the plain.’