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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6604c8d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #67506 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67506) diff --git a/old/67506-0.txt b/old/67506-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 71ca98f..0000000 --- a/old/67506-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,912 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Story of Gombi, by H. de Vere -Stacpoole - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Story of Gombi - -Author: H. de Vere Stacpoole - -Release Date: March 10, 2022 [eBook #67506] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Roger Frank. - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF GOMBI *** - - - The Story of Gombi - - By H. de Vere Stacpoole - Author of “Luck,” “The Mystery of Captain Knott,” Etc. - - Patrick Spence could shoot more than elephants - - -Patrick Spence, a real, old Anglo-Irish gentleman, who would have cut -your throat had you called him a liar, died not long ago at the age of -eighty-six and had a bottle of port with his dinner the day before he -took off. Those were Cassidy the old butler’s words. Cassidy said the -master was as sound as a bell and walking along by the rhododendron -bushes to have a look at the new wing they were adding to the stables -when he sprang into the air, cried, “Got me by glory!” and fell flat, -just as a buck falls when a bullet takes it through the heart. A fit -end for a big-game hunter you will say. A fit, anyhow, the doctors -said. - -The ancestral home of the Spences, The Grange, Scoresby, Lincolnshire, -stands half a mile from the road. You reach it by an avenue of -chestnuts, and in Patrick’s time when the door opened you found -yourself in a hall hung with trophies of the chase; the whole house -was, in fact, a museum. Never in any man had the passion for -collection burned more acutely than in the owner of The Grange, or -shown itself in a more extravagant fashion. Here you found lamps -upheld by pythons, door handles cut from rhinoceros horn, tables -topped with hippopotamus hide, skins and masks everywhere of -everything from black buffalo to Burchell’s zebra. In the long -corridors where the hartebeest heads faced the elands and Grant’s -gazelle grinned at Bohm’s zebra, black bears upheld the electric -standards—black bears and apes. - -The place was a mausoleum. To walk those corridors at night and alone -required a fairly steady nerve, especially when the wind of -Lincolnshire was howling outside like a troop of lost hyenas. There -were envious men who said that three fourths of this collection had -been bought and paid for, but that is the way of the world. No man -ever dared to say it to the owner’s face. - -I was staying at a village ten miles from Scoresby and twelve from The -Grange, when one day I met the old gentleman, whom I had known in -London, and he invited me to a day’s fishing in the stream that runs -past The Grange to join the Witham. We had good sport, but toward the -end of the day the rain began—the rain of Lincolnshire driving across -the fens, drenching, disastrous, dismal. Spence insisted on my staying -for dinner and the night; he gave me a rig-out which included a -Canadian blanket coat and a pair of slippers and a dinner of the good -old times, including a cod’s head served with oyster sauce and a capon -the size of a small turkey. - -Afterward we sat by the hall fire and talked, the light from the -burning logs striking here and there, illuminating horns and masks and -giving a fictitious appearance of life to the snow leopard crouching -as if to spring at me from behind the door. - -“Are those slippers comfortable?” asked Spence, filling his pipe from -the tobacco jar—one of his infernal trophies, a thing made out of a -cross section of elephant shin bone drilled out, for the leg bones of -elephants have no marrow. - -“Quite, thanks.” - -“I got ’em in a queer way, didn’t pay a cent for them, either.” The -cherry-colored cheeks of the old gentleman sucked in and he made the -pipe draw against its will. Then, safely in the clouds, he went on. -“Not a cent, though they cost me the lives of several men and near -three hundred pounds of good ivory.” - -“Mean to say you gave three hundred pounds of ivory for these old -slippers?” - -“Well, I’ll tell you,” said he. “It was such a mixed business. I’ll -have to give you the whole story if you are to understand it, and -first of all I must tell you that though my yarn has to do with Africa -those slippers weren’t made in Africa. - -“You’ve been to Cape Town, haven’t you?—and Durban and away up to -Pretoria by rail, maybe—and you’ve passed thousands of square miles of -country that I’ve seen crawling with game in my time—quagga, gnu, -rhinoceros, lion—all gone now, not enough left to feed an aasvogel. -Yes, I’ve seen that country when it was only to be compared to the -country south of the Orange toward Cape Town—one big-game preserve. -And it was on my second visit to it that the things happened I am -going to tell you of. - -“I was hunting with Tellemark, a Swede, I think he was, or Norwegian, -I forget which, and we were traveling south of the Limpopo and close -on to Portuguese territory; we had a regular caravan—four ox wagons, -half a dozen horses, and about forty Kafirs; and we’d had good -hunting, waters buck, buffalo, rhino and giraffe, but little elephant. -However we were getting into the elephant country—a big rolling -country, broken by thick bush and mimosa trees, with great clumps of -forest sweeping away west where you could see the giraffes grazing -against the trees, looking like toy giraffes taken out of a Noah’s -ark. - -“The place was thick with game. I’ve seen what looked like a moving -cloud shadow miles away—it was a herd of springboks, thousands of -them. I have seen twenty rhinoceros in five square miles of that -country, and buffalo by the hundred. But one day I saw something -stranger than all these. We had rounded a big clump of trees on our -second day after entering this country, when we came upon an elephant. -He was lying down, dead, a great brute thirteen feet to the shoulder, -with ears six foot from tip to lobe, and tusks weighing, we guessed, -close on three hundred pounds. The heaviest tusks ever taken in Africa -weighed four hundred and fifty, so you may guess we were on to a -pretty good thing. But the strange part of the show wasn’t the -elephant but the chaps that had killed him. Pygmies—little chaps not -five foot high. - -“As far as I can make out there are several tribes of Pygmies -lingering about in the African forests, and dying out so quick that -to-day they are there and to-morrow they are gone. This lot we struck -were evidently the stump end of some tribe worn down just to twenty or -thirty members; they had killed the elephant on the edge of the forest -and they were on him like flies. The trunk and feet had been cut off -and the stomach cut open with a big stick stuck to keep it so; half -the tribe was inside the elephant and half on top and round about. But -when they saw us they dropped everything and made off, running for the -woods—reminded me of a lot of sparrows flying from a cat; but one chap -failed to get away, he tripped on something, fell flat on his face, -and before he could get on his hands and knees, I had him. - -“He kicked and fought, but only from fright, and after a while he -quieted down and Tellemark gave him some sugar. You should have seen -his face when he tasted the sugar! It didn’t seem a bad face, either, -round and chubby. And that and the small size of him, together with -his plumpness and the bow and arrow he had dropped, made us call him -Cupid. The bow was the smallest I have ever seen, not a foot from tip -to tip. The arrows were wrapped round with a piece of hide—kind of an -attempt at a quiver; there were dozens of them, not thicker much than -knitting needles, and without barbs. - -“We thought at first that the arrows were used for killing small -birds, but our Kafirs knew different; they pointed to the elephant; -and, sure enough, there was an arrow sticking in the great ear of the -brute, and three or four more sticking in the skin. They were poisoned -arrows, and what the poison could have been, Lord knows, but something -pretty powerful, for a rifle couldn’t have done the business better. -We gave the arrows back to the chap, and the bow, expecting to see him -make off to the woods after the others. Not he. The first fright over -and seeing that we weren’t dangerous, he hung on, staring at the -wagons; it was plain he had never seen anything on wheels before, and -when Tellemark got one of the wagons on the move for a few yards to -show him how it was done, he cried out like a bird chirruping, and -laughed with one hand on his pot-belly till the laughter took the pair -of us and doubled us up. But the Kafirs didn’t laugh; didn’t seem to -see anything funny in him at all; and they didn’t call him Cupid; they -called him Gombi. - -“Our head man said he was no good, belonged to a bad lot and that we -had better get rid of him. But Gombi had his own ideas about that. He -seemed to have attached himself to us as a stray dog does and he hung -round while the boys were taking the tusks, chirruping to himself and -dodging about looking at this and that till the funniest feeling got -hold of me that he wasn’t human but some sort of being from another -world that had come across humans for the first time and was taking -stock of them. But I hadn’t long to think about him, for all of a -sudden round us the air was becoming filled with a stench worse than I -ever smelled before. - -“It was the elephant. The thing had been new killed and warm when we -struck it and now it was going like this, decomposing right under our -eyes, for great blisters were rising on the skin—and I won’t go into -details. “The poison has done that,” said Tellemark. “Looks like it,” -said I. “Let’s shift and get beyond the wagons. The Kafirs won’t -mind.” We got away beyond the wagons and lay down on the wire grass -watching the boys at work and Gombi hopping round them. Right up above -them was a vulture waiting till we had cleared off. I watched him -coming down and going up again. Sometimes you couldn’t see him at all, -then he showed like a pin point, then he’d get bigger, then smaller. - -“Now a vulture even when he is so high as to be beyond sight can see -the body of a dwarf antelope, let alone an elephant, so this chap -wasn’t coming up and down to prospect; it was sheer impatience, -hunger. And I was thinking how full of hunger that sky was when -Tellemark shifted his position, and looking up I saw a bull rhino that -had broken out of the thick stuff on the forest edge and was coming -toward us moving quick, but unflurried. The wind was coming with him -so he couldn’t scent us and being half blind he couldn’t see us. Two -rhinoceros birds were with him, but they weren’t on his back, they -were flying about here and there, following him, and they didn’t seem -alarmed. That’s funny, isn’t it, for if those birds had been on his -back when he was standing still or moving very slowly they would have -cried out at once at the sight of us. Seems to me sometimes as if the -animal and bird world is driven by clockwork, not sense. Then, other -times, it seems as though there were a big genius behind their -movements. Anyhow, the rhino came along unwarned and Tellemark let him -get within thirty yards before he dropped him with a shoulder shot, -dead as mutton. - -“The boys working on the tusks had been looking on, so had Gombi; and -when the dwarf saw old pongo graveled like that he came running for -all he was worth, skipping round the dead brute, plugging his finger -in the bullet wound and sucking it same as a child might with a pie. -And then, when he’d done with the rhino, he fastened on to the rifle, -looking down the barrels, sniffing at them and evidently connecting -the smell with the smell of powder in the air. Then he examined the -locks, as interested as a magpie with a marrow bone. - -“When he’d done he seemed to have come to the conclusion that a Purdy -eight-bore was a weapon he would like to have further acquaintance -with, for he pointed to the elephant, then to the gun, then to himself -and then away to the west. Then he opened and shut the hand that -wasn’t holding the bow, about a dozen times. What he said was clear -enough. There were many elephants to the west and he would lead us to -them if we would take the gun and shoot them. - - - - - II. - - -“Between the wood clump and the one to the west there was maybe five -miles of country rolling and dipping, broken here and there with -euphorbia and mimosa trees. When we’d taken the tusks of the elephant -and some of the rhino meat, we determined to shove right across and -camp near the other woodside; first of all the elephant was getting -more punch in its perfume; second, we wanted to put a considerable -distance between ourselves and those confounded Pygmies, and third, -Cupid was evidently in earnest when he gave us the news of elephant -herds to the west. - -“We hadn’t given much thought to the dwarf’s sign language, and as we -started we expected to see him go off back to his friends who were, no -doubt, watching us from the trees. Not a bit. He had stuck to us for -keeps, as the Yankees say, and when I look back and think how that -little chap stuck to us and followed us, it seems to me that there was -a bit of Christopher Columbus and Leefe Robinson mixed up with the -rest of his character. For it was plain as paint he’d never seen white -men or guns before. - -“He kept along with us right in our tracks like a dog, evidently -thinking we had fallen in with his proposition about the elephant -hunting, and he wasn’t far wrong. We had, in a way, without knowing -it. For next morning when we were holding a hunt council, Tellemark, -seeing that Gombi was still hanging about, waded right in with the -proposition that we’d take the chap for guide—use him as a dog, so to -speak, to find the game. I thought our native boys would buck against -it, but our head man seemed to have lost his grudge against the chap; -got used to him, I suppose, and didn’t put up any difficulties. That -settled it. Leaving the main camp under our head man’s brother, we -started, twelve in all, not counting Gombi, with provisions enough for -a week, though we didn’t expect to be more than three days. - -“We went along the wood belt due west for half a day, then the forest -took a big bend and as we turned it, just about three in the -afternoon, we came on great wads of chewed bowstring hemp lying about, -and the trees alongside of us looked as if a hurricane had stripped -them of their leaves and broken their branches. Elephants are -vegetarians and there’s not a vegetable they won’t eat from an acacia -tree to a cabbage; they’ll beat small trees down and eat them clear of -leaves and bark, and they’ll simply skin big trees, besides reaching -up with their trunks and stripping the branches. Fortunately the wind -had wandered round and was blowing from the west; for a moment after -sighting the chewed hemp Gombi gave us a sign to halt. We saw nothing, -but this little chap had eyes like a vulture and he saw away far ahead -of us a movement in the treetops at one particular spot as if a wind -was tossing them and then we knew there was a herd of elephants in the -forest just there, feeding and shaking the trees. - -“It took us an hour to get within shot. They weren’t feeding in the -forest itself, but in a great bay among the trees; a fairish big herd, -bulls, cows, and calves, some of the calves not more than a week old, -little pinkish beggars, not bigger than a Newfoundland dog. We dropped -two bulls, and when we’d taken their tusks and had supper that night, -Gombi had fairly put his clutch on us and we were ready to follow him -anywhere. - - - - - III. - - -“It’s a funny thing, but if we had come upon a poisonous snake we -would have killed it right away without a thought. Yet coming upon a -creature like Gombi, more poisonous than a snake and a lot more -criminal, seeing he had invented and made his own poison, we let him -live and even took him as a guide—like fools. And next day, listening -to his sign talk and making out that if we followed him and struck -right through the woods he could lead us to another hunting ground, we -followed him. - -“First we struck a great acacia belt and then we came on nsambyas and -plantains mixed with cottonwood. The big lianas began to swing -themselves across the trees and ground lianas to trip us, but the -worst was to come, and it came about six hours after we had entered -the trees. We struck a long patch where the nipa palms grew, springing -like rockets out of the mud, and where you couldn’t take a step -without sinking over ankle, then over knee, then to the middle. When -you pulled your foot out there was a pound of black mud sticking to -it. But Gombi didn’t mind. He knew that place by instinct and piloted -us along till he reached firm ground, stretching like a road across -the bad places and on we went till we hit the same thing again. - -“When we camped that night we had three of those long stretches behind -us, crossed by roads that only Gombi knew. That was a nice position, -wasn’t it, for a lot of sane men to get themselves into and instead of -tying him up and making him lead us back we let him share our meat and -listened to more of his sign talk, telling us that a few hours more -march would bring us out next day where there were elephants to be -found more than he could number. - -“Next day when we woke up he was gone—clean gone. Tellemark and I had -done sentry duty during the night, not trusting the boys, but we had -heard nothing and seen nothing. He must have slipped away like a snake -and it came to me, like a blow over the heart, that we were lost men. -Instinct told me that this beast, intending to destroy us for some -reason of his own, would do his work thoroughly, and I was right. We -had a compass with us and after swallowing our food we started still -west, guessing that the forest wouldn’t last forever in that -direction. But what’s the good of a compass when it only leads you to -a bog patch? We hadn’t been half an hour on the march when we hit one -just as bad as the ones over which Gombi had piloted us; worse, for we -couldn’t find a road across anywhere. - -“There was a big fallen tree just there and I sat down on it. I was -knocked out for the moment. I sat there pretending to be thinking, but -I was thinking about nothing, except that we were done. That was -against reason, for it was clear that by searching we might be able to -find those three roads again that would lead us back east, and where -there’s half a chance no man has a right to give in. But the truth was -my imagination had been seized by Gombi. His picture stood before my -mind as a thing that was all cunning and evil—that and the picture of -ourselves in his toils. - -“Then at last I got a clutch on myself and as I came out of the -doldrums a big idea struck me, big enough to make me laugh, it seemed -so luminous and good. - -“‘What’s the matter?’ asked Tellemark. - -“‘The nipa palms,’ said I. ‘They only grow in the boggy places and -they’ll show us where the firm ground begins.’ - -“But see here,’ said Tellemark. ‘Those roads weren’t more than twenty -feet wide and the palms seemed just as thick there.’ - -“‘Bother the roads,’ said I. ‘Those long mud stretches don’t run -forever north and south. We’ve got to get round them not across them. -Let’s strike on till we reach the palms and then strike north for -choice till the palms give out.’ - -“He saw my meaning at once, and we started due east, returning on our -tracks. - -“We hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when suddenly one of the -boys looked at his arm—something was sticking from it. It was one of -those infernal knitting-needle arrows that had struck him and struck -without causing the least pain. It had come from the thick growth to -the right and Tellemark and I without stopping to look at the boy -plunged right in, chasing here and there, beating the bush and firing -our rifles on chance. Not a sign of anything. When we got back the -chap was dead. - -“It took about twelve seconds for that poison to do its work. - - - - - IV. - - -“Now you’ll see plainly enough that this new development had made -matters ten times worse. Yet instead of that depressing me it bucked -me like a glass of brandy. Sitting there on the log and thinking of -those bog patches round us like traps I’d been down out of sight in -the blues; but now I was as full of life and energy as a grig. Had to -be, for the boys, stampeded by fright, tried to break. Tellemark and I -had our work cut out kicking and gun-butting them so that at the end -of two minutes they were as frightened of us as of Gombi. If we hadn’t -done that they’d have run in every direction, north, south, east and -west, and some would have been bogged and the rest starved and we with -them, for they were throwing the provisions away. We stopped all that -and made them shoulder the bundles and shoulder the tusks. It may seem -funny to you that we should bother about the tusks, seeing the -position we were in; but if we had abandoned that ivory just then we -would have lost half our hold over the boys; they’d have seen that -Gombi had rattled us. - -“We struck the nipa palms after half an hour or so and turned north, -Tellemark leading, while I brought up the rear, each of us with our -guns ready to shoot the first man that bolted and both of us full up -with the knowledge that somewhere in the trees Gombi was tracking us -and only waiting his chance. - -“We had frightened him evidently by chasing and firing through the -bushes, for the whole of that day we heard no more from him. We made -good way and got clear at last from the infernal nipa palms into a -great tract of cottonwoods and nsambyas. - -“Lord! it was like getting out of prison. We knew we had got to the -stump end of the bogs and, turning due east, we reckoned an eight-hour -tramp or so would bring us out somewhere into the open where we had -left the main camp. - -“Tellemark and I figured it out as we went. Four hours due east, was -our idea, and four hours due south. We were right as it afterward -turned out, but we had reckoned without the dark. A couple of hours -after we had turned east it came on and we had to camp in a little -glade, eating our supper in the last of the daylight and then lying -down. We daren’t build a fire and we put out no sentries. If Gombi -were laying round, sentries were no use against him in that black dark -and he was the only thing we feared. We lay spread about, the boys -pretty close together and Tellemark and I apart from them and side by -side. - -“We talked for a bit as we lay there, speaking almost in a whisper, -and then we lay quiet, but we couldn’t sleep. The boys slept like -logs. They thought themselves safe in the dark, no doubt. - -“As for myself I felt certain that beast was lurking somewhere near -and that he would be up to some trick, though what I couldn’t say. I -lay listening for sounds and heard plenty. Away off, miles away it -seemed, I heard the cry of a lion. Not the questing cry, but the cry -of a lion that has fed; then I heard the rooting of a bush pig. Then, -somewhere in the forest, maybe a mile away, a tree went smash. You -often hear that and there is no other sound like it. Some great -cottonwood or euphorbia going rotten for years had suddenly tumbled. - -“After that things got pretty silent till suddenly there came a little -sound that made my heart jump—something different from any other -sound. - -“‘Thr-rub-b!’ - -“I couldn’t be sure, but I could have sworn it was the sound of a taut -string suddenly relaxed. I waited. Then after a while it came again. - -“‘Thr-rub-b!’ - -“I drew my head close to Tellemark’s and whispered, ‘Is that the sound -of a bow?’ - -“‘Yes,’ he whispered. - -“‘Shall we fire?’ I asked him, and he whispered back, ‘No, we’d -stampede the boys—chap’s shooting on chance: Don’t move.’ - -“I took his meaning. Gombi had marked us down. Afraid of firing when -there was light enough to chase him by, he was shooting blind in the -hope of bagging some of us—maybe getting the lot. He’d hit nothing as -yet evidently. - -“I lay still and said my prayers and the thing went on. Five or six -times that bow went; then it stopped. A minute passed, ten minutes. - -“I whispered to Tellemark, ‘He’s gone,’ and the whisper came back, -‘Not he—changing his position.’ - -“I felt things running down my face—sweat drops. Far away off in the -woods came a cry; it was the cry of a hyena; then silence shut down -again. Not a sound, till suddenly—but farther away now—came the noise -of the bow. - -“‘Thr-rub-b!’ and after it, right over my head, something passed -through the air. - -‘Whitt!’ An arrow had missed me by inches. I whispered to Tellemark. -‘Shall we fire?’ and the whisper came back, ‘No. Don’t know where he -is. Flash would give him our position—stampede boys. Chance it.’ - -“It went on. No more arrows came near. Then it stopped. The beast was -evidently changing his position again. A minute passed and then -suddenly out of the dark there came a muffled crash followed by a -squeal and silence. I listened, the sweat running into my eyes, and -there came a new sound close beside me. It was from Tellemark. He -seemed in convulsions. I thought one of the poisoned arrows must have -got him, he was shaking and choking. I clutched him by the shoulder -but he shook himself free. - -“I’m all right,’ he whispered. ‘I’m only laughing—oh, Lord, can’t you -see, that chap’s fallen into an elephant trap.’ Then he went off -again. It wasn’t laughter so much as hysterics, sheer hysterics from -the snapping of the tension and the relief. - -“Tellemark had an ear that could tell the meaning of any sound, and by -the sound he had heard he could tell the truth as plainly as though he -had seen Gombi treading on the bush covering of an elephant trap and -its collapse. Now that he had told me, I could see it too. After a -while, when he had quieted down, I asked him should we rouse the boys -and get the beast out, and he whispered ‘No, can’t do it in the dark. -Leave him till morning and get to sleep.’ - -“I heard him give a few more chuckles as he turned about, then I heard -him breathing quietly and next minute I was asleep myself. I slept for -hours and when I awoke it was just before dawn. Tellemark had stirred -me up. ‘Smell that?’ he whispered. - -“I did. Then the truth broke upon me and I lay there in the dark -thinking of Gombi’s work and waiting for day to show how many he had -got. Then as the day broke I could see, lying there among the others -who were soundly asleep, the swollen bodies of three of the boys, each -with an arrow sticking somewhere in him. The bite of the arrows hadn’t -been enough to wake them. - -“‘We’ve got to get those chaps away before the others see them,’ said -Tellemark. We did—into the woods far to leeward. When we returned, we -could see in the stronger light arrows sticking here and there in the -trees, arrows that had missed their mark. We broke them off carefully, -and flung them away lest the boys should see them. Then we located the -pit with its broken cover. Then, and not till then, we kicked the boys -awake and before they had time to look round told them Gombi was in -the pit. - -“Tellemark had peeped down and seen that it was unstaked, and then -began a powwow as to how we should get the creature out. - -“All sorts of suggestions came from the boys, one fellow wanted to -catch a wild cat and lower it tied by the tail, the cat would catch -Gombi and we’d drag both up. Not a bad idea either, only we hadn’t a -wild cat. Then I solved the business by jumping down myself. He showed -no fight and we had him out in a tick and he bothered the world no -more. - -“That’s all; we got back to camp all right, only we forgot the tusks -in our excitement, nearly three hundred pounds of ivory. - -“Those slippers,” finished the collector of trophies, “are made of -Gombi’s skin. Allenby, of Bond Street, made them for me.” - -By his look of expectancy I guessed at once that I was not the only -man he had trapped into wearing those slippers while listening to that -tale. But the howl of disgust he was waiting for never came—and he -never forgave me, I think. The story ought to end here, but it -doesn’t. For the chief protagonist is not Gombi but Patrick Spence. - -It remains only to ask and answer the debated question—does the gun -like the fishing rod breed liars? - -At the great sale after Sir Patrick’s death I bought those slippers -for four and sixpence and sent them to a high authority, with a simple -question and a stamped telegraph form. The reply came promptly next -day. “Absolutely not. Lamb skin.” - - -[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 7, 1922 -issue of The Popular Magazine.] - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF GOMBI *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Story of Gombi</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H. de Vere Stacpoole</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 10, 2022 [eBook #67506]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Roger Frank.</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF GOMBI ***</div> -<div class='ce'> -<h1 style='margin-bottom:0.5em;'>The Story of Gombi </h1> -<div style='margin-bottom:0.2em;'>By H. de Vere Stacpoole</div> -<div style='font-size:0.9em;margin-bottom:0.7em;'>Author of “Luck,” “The Mystery of Captain Knott,” Etc.</div> -<div style='margin-bottom:2em;'>Patrick Spence could shoot more than elephants</div> -</div> -<p>Patrick Spence, a real, old Anglo-Irish gentleman, who would have cut -your throat had you called him a liar, died not long ago at the age of -eighty-six and had a bottle of port with his dinner the day before he -took off. Those were Cassidy the old butler’s words. Cassidy said the -master was as sound as a bell and walking along by the rhododendron -bushes to have a look at the new wing they were adding to the stables -when he sprang into the air, cried, “Got me by glory!” and fell flat, -just as a buck falls when a bullet takes it through the heart. A fit -end for a big-game hunter you will say. A fit, anyhow, the doctors -said.</p> - -<p>The ancestral home of the Spences, The Grange, Scoresby, Lincolnshire, -stands half a mile from the road. You reach it by an avenue of -chestnuts, and in Patrick’s time when the door opened you found -yourself in a hall hung with trophies of the chase; the whole house -was, in fact, a museum. Never in any man had the passion for -collection burned more acutely than in the owner of The Grange, or -shown itself in a more extravagant fashion. Here you found lamps -upheld by pythons, door handles cut from rhinoceros horn, tables -topped with hippopotamus hide, skins and masks everywhere of -everything from black buffalo to Burchell’s zebra. In the long -corridors where the hartebeest heads faced the elands and Grant’s -gazelle grinned at Bohm’s zebra, black bears upheld the electric -standards—black bears and apes.</p> - -<p>The place was a mausoleum. To walk those corridors at night and alone -required a fairly steady nerve, especially when the wind of -Lincolnshire was howling outside like a troop of lost hyenas. There -were envious men who said that three fourths of this collection had -been bought and paid for, but that is the way of the world. No man -ever dared to say it to the owner’s face.</p> - -<p>I was staying at a village ten miles from Scoresby and twelve from The -Grange, when one day I met the old gentleman, whom I had known in -London, and he invited me to a day’s fishing in the stream that runs -past The Grange to join the Witham. We had good sport, but toward the -end of the day the rain began—the rain of Lincolnshire driving across -the fens, drenching, disastrous, dismal. Spence insisted on my staying -for dinner and the night; he gave me a rig-out which included a -Canadian blanket coat and a pair of slippers and a dinner of the good -old times, including a cod’s head served with oyster sauce and a capon -the size of a small turkey.</p> - -<p>Afterward we sat by the hall fire and talked, the light from the -burning logs striking here and there, illuminating horns and masks and -giving a fictitious appearance of life to the snow leopard crouching -as if to spring at me from behind the door.</p> - -<p>“Are those slippers comfortable?” asked Spence, filling his pipe from -the tobacco jar—one of his infernal trophies, a thing made out of a -cross section of elephant shin bone drilled out, for the leg bones of -elephants have no marrow.</p> - -<p>“Quite, thanks.”</p> - -<p>“I got ’em in a queer way, didn’t pay a cent for them, either.” The -cherry-colored cheeks of the old gentleman sucked in and he made the -pipe draw against its will. Then, safely in the clouds, he went on. -“Not a cent, though they cost me the lives of several men and near -three hundred pounds of good ivory.”</p> - -<p>“Mean to say you gave three hundred pounds of ivory for these old -slippers?”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ll tell you,” said he. “It was such a mixed business. I’ll -have to give you the whole story if you are to understand it, and -first of all I must tell you that though my yarn has to do with Africa -those slippers weren’t made in Africa.</p> - -<p>“You’ve been to Cape Town, haven’t you?—and Durban and away up to -Pretoria by rail, maybe—and you’ve passed thousands of square miles of -country that I’ve seen crawling with game in my time—quagga, gnu, -rhinoceros, lion—all gone now, not enough left to feed an aasvogel. -Yes, I’ve seen that country when it was only to be compared to the -country south of the Orange toward Cape Town—one big-game preserve. -And it was on my second visit to it that the things happened I am -going to tell you of.</p> - -<p>“I was hunting with Tellemark, a Swede, I think he was, or Norwegian, -I forget which, and we were traveling south of the Limpopo and close -on to Portuguese territory; we had a regular caravan—four ox wagons, -half a dozen horses, and about forty Kafirs; and we’d had good -hunting, waters buck, buffalo, rhino and giraffe, but little elephant. -However we were getting into the elephant country—a big rolling -country, broken by thick bush and mimosa trees, with great clumps of -forest sweeping away west where you could see the giraffes grazing -against the trees, looking like toy giraffes taken out of a Noah’s -ark.</p> - -<p>“The place was thick with game. I’ve seen what looked like a moving -cloud shadow miles away—it was a herd of springboks, thousands of -them. I have seen twenty rhinoceros in five square miles of that -country, and buffalo by the hundred. But one day I saw something -stranger than all these. We had rounded a big clump of trees on our -second day after entering this country, when we came upon an elephant. -He was lying down, dead, a great brute thirteen feet to the shoulder, -with ears six foot from tip to lobe, and tusks weighing, we guessed, -close on three hundred pounds. The heaviest tusks ever taken in Africa -weighed four hundred and fifty, so you may guess we were on to a -pretty good thing. But the strange part of the show wasn’t the -elephant but the chaps that had killed him. Pygmies—little chaps not -five foot high.</p> - -<p>“As far as I can make out there are several tribes of Pygmies -lingering about in the African forests, and dying out so quick that -to-day they are there and to-morrow they are gone. This lot we struck -were evidently the stump end of some tribe worn down just to twenty or -thirty members; they had killed the elephant on the edge of the forest -and they were on him like flies. The trunk and feet had been cut off -and the stomach cut open with a big stick stuck to keep it so; half -the tribe was inside the elephant and half on top and round about. But -when they saw us they dropped everything and made off, running for the -woods—reminded me of a lot of sparrows flying from a cat; but one chap -failed to get away, he tripped on something, fell flat on his face, -and before he could get on his hands and knees, I had him.</p> - -<p>“He kicked and fought, but only from fright, and after a while he -quieted down and Tellemark gave him some sugar. You should have seen -his face when he tasted the sugar! It didn’t seem a bad face, either, -round and chubby. And that and the small size of him, together with -his plumpness and the bow and arrow he had dropped, made us call him -Cupid. The bow was the smallest I have ever seen, not a foot from tip -to tip. The arrows were wrapped round with a piece of hide—kind of an -attempt at a quiver; there were dozens of them, not thicker much than -knitting needles, and without barbs.</p> - -<p>“We thought at first that the arrows were used for killing small -birds, but our Kafirs knew different; they pointed to the elephant; -and, sure enough, there was an arrow sticking in the great ear of the -brute, and three or four more sticking in the skin. They were poisoned -arrows, and what the poison could have been, Lord knows, but something -pretty powerful, for a rifle couldn’t have done the business better. -We gave the arrows back to the chap, and the bow, expecting to see him -make off to the woods after the others. Not he. The first fright over -and seeing that we weren’t dangerous, he hung on, staring at the -wagons; it was plain he had never seen anything on wheels before, and -when Tellemark got one of the wagons on the move for a few yards to -show him how it was done, he cried out like a bird chirruping, and -laughed with one hand on his pot-belly till the laughter took the pair -of us and doubled us up. But the Kafirs didn’t laugh; didn’t seem to -see anything funny in him at all; and they didn’t call him Cupid; they -called him Gombi.</p> - -<p>“Our head man said he was no good, belonged to a bad lot and that we -had better get rid of him. But Gombi had his own ideas about that. He -seemed to have attached himself to us as a stray dog does and he hung -round while the boys were taking the tusks, chirruping to himself and -dodging about looking at this and that till the funniest feeling got -hold of me that he wasn’t human but some sort of being from another -world that had come across humans for the first time and was taking -stock of them. But I hadn’t long to think about him, for all of a -sudden round us the air was becoming filled with a stench worse than I -ever smelled before.</p> - -<p>“It was the elephant. The thing had been new killed and warm when we -struck it and now it was going like this, decomposing right under our -eyes, for great blisters were rising on the skin—and I won’t go into -details. “The poison has done that,” said Tellemark. “Looks like it,” -said I. “Let’s shift and get beyond the wagons. The Kafirs won’t -mind.” We got away beyond the wagons and lay down on the wire grass -watching the boys at work and Gombi hopping round them. Right up above -them was a vulture waiting till we had cleared off. I watched him -coming down and going up again. Sometimes you couldn’t see him at all, -then he showed like a pin point, then he’d get bigger, then smaller.</p> - -<p>“Now a vulture even when he is so high as to be beyond sight can see -the body of a dwarf antelope, let alone an elephant, so this chap -wasn’t coming up and down to prospect; it was sheer impatience, -hunger. And I was thinking how full of hunger that sky was when -Tellemark shifted his position, and looking up I saw a bull rhino that -had broken out of the thick stuff on the forest edge and was coming -toward us moving quick, but unflurried. The wind was coming with him -so he couldn’t scent us and being half blind he couldn’t see us. Two -rhinoceros birds were with him, but they weren’t on his back, they -were flying about here and there, following him, and they didn’t seem -alarmed. That’s funny, isn’t it, for if those birds had been on his -back when he was standing still or moving very slowly they would have -cried out at once at the sight of us. Seems to me sometimes as if the -animal and bird world is driven by clockwork, not sense. Then, other -times, it seems as though there were a big genius behind their -movements. Anyhow, the rhino came along unwarned and Tellemark let him -get within thirty yards before he dropped him with a shoulder shot, -dead as mutton.</p> - -<p>“The boys working on the tusks had been looking on, so had Gombi; and -when the dwarf saw old pongo graveled like that he came running for -all he was worth, skipping round the dead brute, plugging his finger -in the bullet wound and sucking it same as a child might with a pie. -And then, when he’d done with the rhino, he fastened on to the rifle, -looking down the barrels, sniffing at them and evidently connecting -the smell with the smell of powder in the air. Then he examined the -locks, as interested as a magpie with a marrow bone.</p> - -<p>“When he’d done he seemed to have come to the conclusion that a Purdy -eight-bore was a weapon he would like to have further acquaintance -with, for he pointed to the elephant, then to the gun, then to himself -and then away to the west. Then he opened and shut the hand that -wasn’t holding the bow, about a dozen times. What he said was clear -enough. There were many elephants to the west and he would lead us to -them if we would take the gun and shoot them.</p> - -<h2>II.</h2> - -<p>“Between the wood clump and the one to the west there was maybe five -miles of country rolling and dipping, broken here and there with -euphorbia and mimosa trees. When we’d taken the tusks of the elephant -and some of the rhino meat, we determined to shove right across and -camp near the other woodside; first of all the elephant was getting -more punch in its perfume; second, we wanted to put a considerable -distance between ourselves and those confounded Pygmies, and third, -Cupid was evidently in earnest when he gave us the news of elephant -herds to the west.</p> - -<p>“We hadn’t given much thought to the dwarf’s sign language, and as we -started we expected to see him go off back to his friends who were, no -doubt, watching us from the trees. Not a bit. He had stuck to us for -keeps, as the Yankees say, and when I look back and think how that -little chap stuck to us and followed us, it seems to me that there was -a bit of Christopher Columbus and Leefe Robinson mixed up with the -rest of his character. For it was plain as paint he’d never seen white -men or guns before.</p> - -<p>“He kept along with us right in our tracks like a dog, evidently -thinking we had fallen in with his proposition about the elephant -hunting, and he wasn’t far wrong. We had, in a way, without knowing -it. For next morning when we were holding a hunt council, Tellemark, -seeing that Gombi was still hanging about, waded right in with the -proposition that we’d take the chap for guide—use him as a dog, so to -speak, to find the game. I thought our native boys would buck against -it, but our head man seemed to have lost his grudge against the chap; -got used to him, I suppose, and didn’t put up any difficulties. That -settled it. Leaving the main camp under our head man’s brother, we -started, twelve in all, not counting Gombi, with provisions enough for -a week, though we didn’t expect to be more than three days.</p> - -<p>“We went along the wood belt due west for half a day, then the forest -took a big bend and as we turned it, just about three in the -afternoon, we came on great wads of chewed bowstring hemp lying about, -and the trees alongside of us looked as if a hurricane had stripped -them of their leaves and broken their branches. Elephants are -vegetarians and there’s not a vegetable they won’t eat from an acacia -tree to a cabbage; they’ll beat small trees down and eat them clear of -leaves and bark, and they’ll simply skin big trees, besides reaching -up with their trunks and stripping the branches. Fortunately the wind -had wandered round and was blowing from the west; for a moment after -sighting the chewed hemp Gombi gave us a sign to halt. We saw nothing, -but this little chap had eyes like a vulture and he saw away far ahead -of us a movement in the treetops at one particular spot as if a wind -was tossing them and then we knew there was a herd of elephants in the -forest just there, feeding and shaking the trees.</p> - -<p>“It took us an hour to get within shot. They weren’t feeding in the -forest itself, but in a great bay among the trees; a fairish big herd, -bulls, cows, and calves, some of the calves not more than a week old, -little pinkish beggars, not bigger than a Newfoundland dog. We dropped -two bulls, and when we’d taken their tusks and had supper that night, -Gombi had fairly put his clutch on us and we were ready to follow him -anywhere.</p> - -<h2>III.</h2> - -<p>“It’s a funny thing, but if we had come upon a poisonous snake we -would have killed it right away without a thought. Yet coming upon a -creature like Gombi, more poisonous than a snake and a lot more -criminal, seeing he had invented and made his own poison, we let him -live and even took him as a guide—like fools. And next day, listening -to his sign talk and making out that if we followed him and struck -right through the woods he could lead us to another hunting ground, we -followed him.</p> - -<p>“First we struck a great acacia belt and then we came on nsambyas and -plantains mixed with cottonwood. The big lianas began to swing -themselves across the trees and ground lianas to trip us, but the -worst was to come, and it came about six hours after we had entered -the trees. We struck a long patch where the nipa palms grew, springing -like rockets out of the mud, and where you couldn’t take a step -without sinking over ankle, then over knee, then to the middle. When -you pulled your foot out there was a pound of black mud sticking to -it. But Gombi didn’t mind. He knew that place by instinct and piloted -us along till he reached firm ground, stretching like a road across -the bad places and on we went till we hit the same thing again.</p> - -<p>“When we camped that night we had three of those long stretches behind -us, crossed by roads that only Gombi knew. That was a nice position, -wasn’t it, for a lot of sane men to get themselves into and instead of -tying him up and making him lead us back we let him share our meat and -listened to more of his sign talk, telling us that a few hours more -march would bring us out next day where there were elephants to be -found more than he could number.</p> - -<p>“Next day when we woke up he was gone—clean gone. Tellemark and I had -done sentry duty during the night, not trusting the boys, but we had -heard nothing and seen nothing. He must have slipped away like a snake -and it came to me, like a blow over the heart, that we were lost men. -Instinct told me that this beast, intending to destroy us for some -reason of his own, would do his work thoroughly, and I was right. We -had a compass with us and after swallowing our food we started still -west, guessing that the forest wouldn’t last forever in that -direction. But what’s the good of a compass when it only leads you to -a bog patch? We hadn’t been half an hour on the march when we hit one -just as bad as the ones over which Gombi had piloted us; worse, for we -couldn’t find a road across anywhere.</p> - -<p>“There was a big fallen tree just there and I sat down on it. I was -knocked out for the moment. I sat there pretending to be thinking, but -I was thinking about nothing, except that we were done. That was -against reason, for it was clear that by searching we might be able to -find those three roads again that would lead us back east, and where -there’s half a chance no man has a right to give in. But the truth was -my imagination had been seized by Gombi. His picture stood before my -mind as a thing that was all cunning and evil—that and the picture of -ourselves in his toils.</p> - -<p>“Then at last I got a clutch on myself and as I came out of the -doldrums a big idea struck me, big enough to make me laugh, it seemed -so luminous and good.</p> - -<p>“‘What’s the matter?’ asked Tellemark.</p> - -<p>“‘The nipa palms,’ said I. ‘They only grow in the boggy places and -they’ll show us where the firm ground begins.’</p> - -<p>“But see here,’ said Tellemark. ‘Those roads weren’t more than twenty -feet wide and the palms seemed just as thick there.’</p> - -<p>“‘Bother the roads,’ said I. ‘Those long mud stretches don’t run -forever north and south. We’ve got to get round them not across them. -Let’s strike on till we reach the palms and then strike north for -choice till the palms give out.’</p> - -<p>“He saw my meaning at once, and we started due east, returning on our -tracks.</p> - -<p>“We hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when suddenly one of the -boys looked at his arm—something was sticking from it. It was one of -those infernal knitting-needle arrows that had struck him and struck -without causing the least pain. It had come from the thick growth to -the right and Tellemark and I without stopping to look at the boy -plunged right in, chasing here and there, beating the bush and firing -our rifles on chance. Not a sign of anything. When we got back the -chap was dead.</p> - -<p>“It took about twelve seconds for that poison to do its work.</p> - -<h2>IV.</h2> - -<p>“Now you’ll see plainly enough that this new development had made -matters ten times worse. Yet instead of that depressing me it bucked -me like a glass of brandy. Sitting there on the log and thinking of -those bog patches round us like traps I’d been down out of sight in -the blues; but now I was as full of life and energy as a grig. Had to -be, for the boys, stampeded by fright, tried to break. Tellemark and I -had our work cut out kicking and gun-butting them so that at the end -of two minutes they were as frightened of us as of Gombi. If we hadn’t -done that they’d have run in every direction, north, south, east and -west, and some would have been bogged and the rest starved and we with -them, for they were throwing the provisions away. We stopped all that -and made them shoulder the bundles and shoulder the tusks. It may seem -funny to you that we should bother about the tusks, seeing the -position we were in; but if we had abandoned that ivory just then we -would have lost half our hold over the boys; they’d have seen that -Gombi had rattled us.</p> - -<p>“We struck the nipa palms after half an hour or so and turned north, -Tellemark leading, while I brought up the rear, each of us with our -guns ready to shoot the first man that bolted and both of us full up -with the knowledge that somewhere in the trees Gombi was tracking us -and only waiting his chance.</p> - -<p>“We had frightened him evidently by chasing and firing through the -bushes, for the whole of that day we heard no more from him. We made -good way and got clear at last from the infernal nipa palms into a -great tract of cottonwoods and nsambyas.</p> - -<p>“Lord! it was like getting out of prison. We knew we had got to the -stump end of the bogs and, turning due east, we reckoned an eight-hour -tramp or so would bring us out somewhere into the open where we had -left the main camp.</p> - -<p>“Tellemark and I figured it out as we went. Four hours due east, was -our idea, and four hours due south. We were right as it afterward -turned out, but we had reckoned without the dark. A couple of hours -after we had turned east it came on and we had to camp in a little -glade, eating our supper in the last of the daylight and then lying -down. We daren’t build a fire and we put out no sentries. If Gombi -were laying round, sentries were no use against him in that black dark -and he was the only thing we feared. We lay spread about, the boys -pretty close together and Tellemark and I apart from them and side by -side.</p> - -<p>“We talked for a bit as we lay there, speaking almost in a whisper, -and then we lay quiet, but we couldn’t sleep. The boys slept like -logs. They thought themselves safe in the dark, no doubt.</p> - -<p>“As for myself I felt certain that beast was lurking somewhere near -and that he would be up to some trick, though what I couldn’t say. I -lay listening for sounds and heard plenty. Away off, miles away it -seemed, I heard the cry of a lion. Not the questing cry, but the cry -of a lion that has fed; then I heard the rooting of a bush pig. Then, -somewhere in the forest, maybe a mile away, a tree went smash. You -often hear that and there is no other sound like it. Some great -cottonwood or euphorbia going rotten for years had suddenly tumbled.</p> - -<p>“After that things got pretty silent till suddenly there came a little -sound that made my heart jump—something different from any other -sound.</p> - -<p>“‘Thr-rub-b!’</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t be sure, but I could have sworn it was the sound of a taut -string suddenly relaxed. I waited. Then after a while it came again.</p> - -<p>“‘Thr-rub-b!’</p> - -<p>“I drew my head close to Tellemark’s and whispered, ‘Is that the sound -of a bow?’</p> - -<p>“‘Yes,’ he whispered.</p> - -<p>“‘Shall we fire?’ I asked him, and he whispered back, ‘No, we’d -stampede the boys—chap’s shooting on chance: Don’t move.’</p> - -<p>“I took his meaning. Gombi had marked us down. Afraid of firing when -there was light enough to chase him by, he was shooting blind in the -hope of bagging some of us—maybe getting the lot. He’d hit nothing as -yet evidently.</p> - -<p>“I lay still and said my prayers and the thing went on. Five or six -times that bow went; then it stopped. A minute passed, ten minutes.</p> - -<p>“I whispered to Tellemark, ‘He’s gone,’ and the whisper came back, -‘Not he—changing his position.’</p> - -<p>“I felt things running down my face—sweat drops. Far away off in the -woods came a cry; it was the cry of a hyena; then silence shut down -again. Not a sound, till suddenly—but farther away now—came the noise -of the bow.</p> - -<p>“‘Thr-rub-b!’ and after it, right over my head, something passed -through the air.</p> - -<p>‘Whitt!’ An arrow had missed me by inches. I whispered to Tellemark. -‘Shall we fire?’ and the whisper came back, ‘No. Don’t know where he -is. Flash would give him our position—stampede boys. Chance it.’</p> - -<p>“It went on. No more arrows came near. Then it stopped. The beast was -evidently changing his position again. A minute passed and then -suddenly out of the dark there came a muffled crash followed by a -squeal and silence. I listened, the sweat running into my eyes, and -there came a new sound close beside me. It was from Tellemark. He -seemed in convulsions. I thought one of the poisoned arrows must have -got him, he was shaking and choking. I clutched him by the shoulder -but he shook himself free.</p> - -<p>“I’m all right,’ he whispered. ‘I’m only laughing—oh, Lord, can’t you -see, that chap’s fallen into an elephant trap.’ Then he went off -again. It wasn’t laughter so much as hysterics, sheer hysterics from -the snapping of the tension and the relief.</p> - -<p>“Tellemark had an ear that could tell the meaning of any sound, and by -the sound he had heard he could tell the truth as plainly as though he -had seen Gombi treading on the bush covering of an elephant trap and -its collapse. Now that he had told me, I could see it too. After a -while, when he had quieted down, I asked him should we rouse the boys -and get the beast out, and he whispered ‘No, can’t do it in the dark. -Leave him till morning and get to sleep.’</p> - -<p>“I heard him give a few more chuckles as he turned about, then I heard -him breathing quietly and next minute I was asleep myself. I slept for -hours and when I awoke it was just before dawn. Tellemark had stirred -me up. ‘Smell that?’ he whispered.</p> - -<p>“I did. Then the truth broke upon me and I lay there in the dark -thinking of Gombi’s work and waiting for day to show how many he had -got. Then as the day broke I could see, lying there among the others -who were soundly asleep, the swollen bodies of three of the boys, each -with an arrow sticking somewhere in him. The bite of the arrows hadn’t -been enough to wake them.</p> - -<p>“‘We’ve got to get those chaps away before the others see them,’ said -Tellemark. We did—into the woods far to leeward. When we returned, we -could see in the stronger light arrows sticking here and there in the -trees, arrows that had missed their mark. We broke them off carefully, -and flung them away lest the boys should see them. Then we located the -pit with its broken cover. Then, and not till then, we kicked the boys -awake and before they had time to look round told them Gombi was in -the pit.</p> - -<p>“Tellemark had peeped down and seen that it was unstaked, and then -began a powwow as to how we should get the creature out.</p> - -<p>“All sorts of suggestions came from the boys, one fellow wanted to -catch a wild cat and lower it tied by the tail, the cat would catch -Gombi and we’d drag both up. Not a bad idea either, only we hadn’t a -wild cat. Then I solved the business by jumping down myself. He showed -no fight and we had him out in a tick and he bothered the world no -more.</p> - -<p>“That’s all; we got back to camp all right, only we forgot the tusks -in our excitement, nearly three hundred pounds of ivory.</p> - -<p>“Those slippers,” finished the collector of trophies, “are made of -Gombi’s skin. Allenby, of Bond Street, made them for me.”</p> - -<p>By his look of expectancy I guessed at once that I was not the only -man he had trapped into wearing those slippers while listening to that -tale. But the howl of disgust he was waiting for never came—and he -never forgave me, I think. The story ought to end here, but it -doesn’t. For the chief protagonist is not Gombi but Patrick Spence.</p> - -<p>It remains only to ask and answer the debated question—does the gun -like the fishing rod breed liars?</p> - -<p>At the great sale after Sir Patrick’s death I bought those slippers -for four and sixpence and sent them to a high authority, with a simple -question and a stamped telegraph form. The reply came promptly next -day. “Absolutely not. Lamb skin.”</p> - -<div class='tn'> - <p style='text-indent:0'>Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in - the February 7, 1922 issue of <i>The Popular Magazine</i>.</p> -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF GOMBI ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ -concept and trademark. 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