06 African Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page B

bosses the expedition, sees that the camp is supplied with food, tracks the elephant or buffalo or lion, and tells the sportsman when to fire. If the sportsman only wounds the beast and it charges him, it is the White Hunter who must save his client’s life by bringing down the enraged beast with a bullet in the heart or brain. When the sportsman poses for his picture with rifle in hand and one foot on the dead beast, the White Hunter has the right to pose beside him.
    It’s a proud life, a wonderful life. Who wouldn’t want to be a White Hunter?
    ‘But it’s not for me,’ Bigg said. ‘I don’t know a thing about hunting.’
    ‘Now don’t tell me that,’ said his friend. ‘Haven’t you ever shot anything?’
    ‘Only a jack-rabbit. And it got away.’
    ‘No matter. You don’t need to be able to shoot. Your client will do the shooting.’
    ‘Suppose he misses?’
    Tell your gun-bearers beforehand to be ready to shoot. Then if your sportsman misses, you and your gun-bearers blaze away all at the same time. One of them is bound to hit home, and who’s going to say it wasn’t you?’
    ‘But I wouldn’t know where to take anybody to find game.’
    ‘What of it? Your Africans will know. Leave it to them. Let them do the work and you take the credit’
     
    It sounded good. Bigg smiled. ‘How do I get started in this racket?’
    ‘Put an advertisement in one of the sport magazines. You know - ‘Professional hunter, long experience, expert shot, results guaranteed’ - then give your name and address. Oh, there’s one more thing. You ought to have a handle to your name.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Captain or major or something. Makes it easier to sell yourself. Gives you class.’
    Benny Bigg thought it over. If captain would be good and major better, then colonel would be still better. So he became Colonel Benjamin Bigg, White Hunter.
    His advertisement in Outdoor Life brought a radiogram from a wealthy New Yorker: ‘State price for thirty-day safari.’ He must have been wealthy, since he did not back down when Bigg replied with a quotation of seven thousand dollars for his expert services for one month.
    Bigg’s offer was accepted. Bigg instructed his client to meet him in Nairobi, where most safaris are outfitted,
    The client, Hiram Bullwinkle, together with his wife, arrived at the time set. In the lounge of the Norfolk Hotel they met the famous hunter to whose skill and daring they were going to trust their lives for the coming month.
    Colonel Bigg played his part to the limit. He casually referred to his exploits during the war (he didn’t say which war) and tossed off the names of some of his former clients, such as the Archduke of Austria and the King of Norway. Mrs Bullwinkle was entranced with this romantic hero of war and wilderness. Mr Bullwinkle was impressed, but a little uneasy. Somehow this professional hunter seemed a little too good.
    Bigg went to an outfitting firm which did the things he didn’t know how to do for himself. They got for him the necessary game licences, experienced African gun-bearers and trackers, food supplies for thirty days, tents, cots, and folding bath-tubs, jeeps and Land-Rover.
    So the safari took off, the clients guided by the ‘colonel’, the ‘colonel’ guided by his Africans.
    For the first week everything went fairly well. Mr Bull winkle bagged an elephant. His own bullet merely wounded the beast, but the gallant White Hunter and three black gun-bearers all fired at once and the elephant dropped dead.
    It was odd that a monkey in a tree fell dead at the same moment. Colonel Bigg explained that one of his gun-bearers was not a very good shot. But Mr Bullwinkle remembered that the White Hunter’s gun had most curiously wobbled about and at the moment of firing seemed to be pointed rather above the elephant’s back and directly towards that monkey.
    A waterbuck, a wildebeest, and a zebra were added to the bag, but each time there seemed some doubt about the