There was a third problem, too, though David did not mention it in his letter, probably because it was not a problem in all parts of Africa. However, it was a very big problem around Mabotsa. The region was infested with lions. David had often wondered what would happen if he were ever to come face-to-face with a lion in the wild. He didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Chapter 10
Tau, Tau!
It was midafternoon, and David stretched. He was sitting on the veranda of the new mission house with Mebalwe, the native agent. The more he talked and planned with Mebalwe, the more convinced he became that the way to reach Africans with the gospel message was by training up more people like Mebalwe. Mebalwe already spoke the language, knew the ways of the people, and was ready to give his life if necessary.
“On Thursday next week we will visit the tribes to the northeast,” said David, thinking of all the opportunities that lay ahead of him. “I’ve discussed it with Reverend Moffat, and he thinks we should build an outstation somewhere up there in a month or so.”
Mebalwe nodded. “It is a good thing the reverend is finally home,” he said.
David could not have agreed more. Finally, in December 1843, they had received word that Robert and Mary Moffat and their three grown daughters, Mary, Ann, and Bessie, had landed at Port Elizabeth. David had been so excited that he had jumped onto a horse and raced off to meet the Moffats at the Vaal River, one hundred fifty miles south of Kuruman. At first David was a little embarrassed about his enthusiasm, but traveling back to Kuruman with the family had provided him with a good opportunity to sound out the Reverend Moffat about his ideas for developing new mission stations farther north.
Suddenly David’s thoughts were interrupted. “Tau, tau,” yelled a warrior standing right in front of the mission house. The warrior pointed towards the south.
“Lions?” asked David. “What happened?”
The warrior spoke wildly. “It’s killing sheep on the hill. We must go now!” With that he ran off towards the cluster of huts farther down the path.
“Come on,” said David grimly. “We’ll have to get our guns and be the backup.”
Mebalwe followed David into the house.
“I don’t like to use guns in the village. It’s a bad idea for the natives to rely on guns to get them out of trouble. It’s a much better idea for them to use their traditional methods, but if the lion is killing sheep,” David shrugged his shoulders, “what else can we do?”
A minute later David and Mebalwe emerged from the house. Each carried a muzzleloading rifle and a leather pouch filled with gunpowder and half-inch bullets. Outside a throng of men surged past the house armed with everything from spears to sticks and clubs.
“Let’s go,” said David, tightly grasping his rifle and stepping off the veranda into the crowd.
When they reached the hillside, a gruesome sight met their eyes. Nine sheep carcasses covered in blood were strewn over the ground. The rest of the flock were huddled together and bleating loudly.
“This is the worst attack I’ve seen,” remarked Mebalwe, shaking his head. “But where is the lion now?”
It was a question everyone seemed to be trying to answer. Groups of men were cautiously poking their spears into the long grass and behind rocks.
“Over there!” came a sudden cry, and all eyes turned to a clump of grass beside a baobab tree.
David peered at the clump. The grass moved, and David could make out the outline of the huge golden-brown body of the lion. He whistled under his breath. It was the biggest lion he had ever seen. It must have weighed at least four hundred pounds.
“Circle it,” yelled one of the tribesmen. Obediently the men fanned out in a wide circle around the tree.
David and Mebalwe poured gunpowder into the barrels of their rifles, then placed a lead bullet in after it and rammed it down. They then hung back with their guns at the ready in case they were needed as the men of the village moved in on the lion. In a flash, the lion sprang towards the men, who scattered in terror. Before anyone realized what had happened, the lion was gone.
The men stood for a moment, too stunned to speak. Then they all began to yell at once. “Why had the lion gotten away?” they asked. “Why didn’t they hold their ground and throw their spears?”
The men argued back and forth for several minutes, but they had no answers. David decided the men had simply lost their nerve at the wrong moment, and now the lion had escaped. It would be hidden back in the hills by now, and no one had the courage to go after it. Four men were left to stand guard over the remaining sheep while others picked up the dead carcasses and carried them back to the village.
Whatever had gone wrong, at least there would be roast mutton for dinner tonight, David thought as he turned to walk back to the mission house. “Come on, Mebalwe, let’s head back. We aren’t needed here,” he said.
As the two men walked in silence along the path that led through some rocky outcrops, something moved in the undergrowth. The men stopped in their tracks. Suddenly David saw the flick of a tail—a lion’s tail. The lion hadn’t run away into the hills, after all. It was here, no more than ten feet away.
Without taking his eyes off the huge beast for one second, David reached over his shoulder for his rifle. He put the rifle stock to his shoulder, lined up the sights with the lion’s eyes, and smoothly pulled the trigger. Boom! A flash of burning gunpowder erupted from the end of the barrel, and the lead bullet slammed into the lion’s neck. The lion roared in agony, but instead of lying down, it crouched on its haunches and leapt forward.
Pain raced through David’s body as the lion’s jaws clamped down hard on David’s left arm. The lion lifted David into the air and shook him like a cat shaking a mouse. Then David felt the beast’s hot breath on his face and its saliva seeping through his jacket. The lion’s claws rested on David’s head, and David guessed that the lion was about to rip his skull open. Through the searing pain in his body he could feel his heart thumping wildly in his chest. In the background he could hear shouting, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. It was just he and the lion, and the lion seemed to have the advantage. The lion shook David again, and this time David felt bones breaking and skin ripping.
Boom! Another gunshot rang out, and the lion dropped David like a sack of corn. David lay on the ground stunned for a second, and then he rolled over. “God, help us,” he cried as he saw the lion bearing down on Mebalwe. The gun flew out of the African’s hands as the lion closed its huge mouth around Mebalwe’s thigh.
The men from the village who had been staring at the sight suddenly sprang into action. They hurled five, ten, fifteen spears at the lion. The lion made a final leap at yet another man, but the gunshots and the spears had taken their toll. As the lion fell dead, David slipped into unconsciousness.
Fifteen minutes later David regained consciousness. He was lying on the veranda of the mission house, with Roger Edwards bending over him. “Are you all right?” Roger asked anxiously.
David tried to sit up, but a searing pain shot up his arm and through his body. Then he remembered the cracking of bone he’d heard while the lion was shaking him. “You have to cut this jacket off me so I can see how my arm looks,” he said. Then remembering Mebalwe, he grasped Roger’s arm with his right hand. “What about Mebalwe? Is he alive?”
“Yes,” replied Roger. “He has deep wounds from the teeth, but I don’t think anything is broken.”
David slumped back down onto the veranda. At least no one had died trying to save him.
“Bring me a knife,” Roger said to his wife, who was hovering behind him.
Roger’s wife was back in an instant with a small hunting knife. Roger held the cuff of David’s jacket away from David’s skin and began to cut. “It looks bad,” he said in a low voice. “Lots of blood. What should I do?”
David tried to block out his pain and think of himself as he would any of his patients. “Is it still bleeding?” he asked.
Roger looked carefully at David’s upper left arm. “No, it looks like it’s stopped,” he replied, counting eleven puncture marks from the lion’s teeth.
“Then you’ll need to feel along it. Start at the shoulder and work down. Gently.” He braced himself for the pain.
“It’s bumpy here,” reported Roger.
Gingerly David moved his right hand to the spot Roger was holding. He ran his fingers along the bone. “It’s broken, for sure—the humerus,” he agreed. “You’ll need to wash the blood off and then bandage it and splint it for me. Do you think you can do that?” he asked, noting the pale look on Roger’s face.
“If you stay conscious and tell me what to do,” Roger replied, obviously not relishing the task that lay ahead.
When his arm was finally set, David was left to sleep. The pain was excruciating, but he knew he was blessed. If the lion had dug its claws into his head, he would have been a dead man. Of course, being a doctor, David knew that there was the risk that his wound could become infected, and that could well kill him as easily as the lion’s claws.
For many days, David lay on his back as his arm began to heal. He was grateful that his wound did not become infected. While he recuperated, he wrote many letters home, including one to his father. Since he didn’t want to alarm his father, he wrote, “You need not be sorry for me, for long before this reaches you [my arm] will be quite as strong as ever it was. Gratitude is the only feeling we ought to have in remembering the event. Do not mention this to anyone. I do not like to be talked about.”
As he lay on his back, David thought about the Moffat family—in particular, their oldest daughter, Mary. He had spent a lot of time talking with her as he accompanied the family on the last leg of their journey back to Kuruman. He had seen something in Mary, something that made him reconsider his original plan to stay single the rest of his life. He had always thought it would be too much to ask of a Scottish woman to give up everything to move to Africa. While he loved all of Africa’s strange ways—from traveling hundreds of miles on an ox or horse to eating unknown foods and facing snakes and other wild animals—he could not imagine any woman he knew in Scotland enjoying such challenges. What he had never considered was finding a European woman born and bred in Africa and familiar with all the continent’s peculiar ways. Mary Moffat was such a woman, and the more he thought about her, the more convinced he became that she might be the woman to be his wife. David was impetuous and didn’t want to wait around to find out how Mary felt about him. So, two months after the lion attack, when he was able to get up and walk around, he took decisive action.
“You’re not saddling up that horse to ride it, are you?” asked Roger Edwards incredulously. “Your arm can’t possibly have healed well enough for that.”
“I’m tired of lying around all day. It’s time I was up and about,” David replied.
“Up and about, yes,” said Roger. “But riding a horse! You’re out of your mind!”
“Perhaps,” agreed David. “But staring at four walls day after day is enough to make anyone crazy, don’t you think? I’ll be away for ten days or so. I’m going to pay Mary Moffat a call.”
“Mary Moffat?” spluttered Roger Edwards. “At Kuruman?”
David smiled as he flung a saddlebag over the horse with his good arm. “That’s right. Here, give me a leg up, would you?”
Roger was still shaking his head in disbelief as David, one hand on the reins and the other hanging in a sling, rode off.
The trip to Kuruman was just what David needed. He was out and about again, and although he had been mauled by a lion, he wasn’t afraid to be alone in the African bush. He believed that if he let the animals alone, they would let him alone, too, and mostly they did.
Back in Kuruman, after hearing about the episode with the lion, the Reverend Moffat wanted to know everything about Mabotsa. How was the church building coming along? How many children came to the school? Was Mebalwe working out well, and what was he doing?
