The Purdey gun has a second history which gives it more value in my eyes than the good work it did for me. I lent it to Baker when he went up the Nile, and it had the honour, I believe, of being left with Lady Baker to be used, if required, during her husband’s enforced absences. Baker returned it to me with a note apologising for the homeliness of the ramrod--a thornstick which still rests in the ferrules--adding that having to defend themselves from a sudden attack, his man Richarn, being hard pressed whilst loading, had fired the original ramrod into a chief’s stomach, from which they had no opportunity of extracting it.
I am sorry now for all the fine old beasts I have killed; but I was young then, there was excitement in the work, I had large numbers of men to feed, and if these are not considered sound excuses for slaughter, the regret is lightened by the knowledge that every animal, save three elephants, was eaten by man, and so put to a good use. I have no notes, and though many scenes and adventures stand out sharply enough, the sequence of events and surroundings is not always very clear. If my short narrative seems to take too much the form of a rather bald account of personal adventure, I must apologise; and I may add that the nature and habits generally of the animals I met with are now so well known, and have over and over again been so well described by competent writers, that my relations with a few individuals of their families must be the burden of my song.
I spent five years in Africa. I was never ill for a single day--laid up occasionally after an accident, but that was all. I had the best of companions--Murray, Vardon, Livingstone--and capital servants, who stuck to me throughout. I never had occasion to raise a hand against a native, and my foot only once, when I found a long lazy fellow poking his paw into my sugar tin. If I remember right, I never lost anything by theft, and I have had tusks of elephants, shot eighty miles from the waggons, duly delivered. One chief, and one only, wanted to hector a little, but he soon gave it up. And with the rest of the potentates, and people generally, I was certainly a _persona grata_, for I filled their stomachs, and thus, as they assured me, in some mysterious way made their hearts white.