Read Online West with the Night by Beryl Markham - Free Book Online

remember that time at Kabete when you were a little child?’
    ‘I’ll never forget it.’
    ‘Nor I,’ said Bishon Singh.
    I turned and went forward to the propeller of the Avian and grasped the highest blade with my right hand and nodded to Woody. He sat in the front cockpit ready to switch on.
    Bishon Singh moved backward a few steps, close to his Tom Thumb cavalcade. The three donkeys left off their meagre feeding, raised their heads and tilted their ears. The Kikuyu boys stood behind the donkeys and waited. In the dead light the Klemm had lost her brilliance and was only the sad and discredited figure of an aerial Jezebel.
    ‘God will keep you,’ said Bishon Singh.
    ‘Good-bye and good fortune!’ I called.
    ‘Contact!’ roared Woody and I swung the prop.
    He lay, at last, on a bed in the small neat shack of the East African Aero Club waiting for food, for a drink — and, I suspect, for sympathy.
    ‘The Klemm is a bitch,’ he said. ‘No man in his right mind should ever fly a Klemm aeroplane, with a Pobjoy motor, in Africa. You treat her kindly, you nurse her engine, you put silver dope on her wings, and what happens?’
    ‘The magneto goes wrong,’ I said.
    ‘It’s like a woman with nerves,’ said Woody, ‘or no conscience, or even an imbecile!’
    ‘Oh, much worse.’
    ‘Why do we fly?’ said Woody. ‘We could do other things. We could work in offices, or have farms, or get into the Civil Service. We could …’
    ‘We could give up flying tomorrow. You could, anyhow. You could walk away from your plane and never put your feet on a rudder bar again. You could forget about weather and night flights and forced landings, and passengers who get airsick, and spare parts that you can’t find, and wonderful new ships that you can’t buy. You could forget all that and go off somewhere away from Africa and never look at an aerodrome again. You might be a very happy man, so why don’t you?’
    ‘I couldn’t bear it,’ said Woody. ‘It would all be so dull.’
    ‘It can be dull anyway.’
    ‘Even with lions tearing you to bits at Kabete?’
    ‘Oh, that was back in my childhood. Some day I’ll write a book and you can read about it.’
    ‘God forbid!’ said Woody.

BOOK TWO

V
He Was a Good Lion
    W HEN I WAS A child, I spent all my days with the Nandi Murani, hunting barefooted, in the Rongai Valley, or in the cedar forests of the Mau Escarpment.
    At first I was not permitted to carry a spear, but the Murani depended on nothing else.
    You cannot hunt an animal with such a weapon unless you know the way of his life. You must know the things he loves, the things he fears, the paths he will follow. You must be sure of the quality of his speed and the measure of his courage. He will know as much about you, and at times make better use of it.
    But my Murani friends were patient with me.
    ‘Amin yut!’ one would say, ‘what but a dik-dik will run like that? Your eyes are filled with clouds today, Lakweit!’
    That day my eyes were filled with clouds, but they were young enough eyes and they soon cleared. There were other days and other dik-dik. There were so many things.
    There were dik-dik and leopard, kongoni and warthog, buffalo, lion, and the ‘hare that jumps.’ There were many thousands of the hare that jumps.
    And there were wildebeest and antelope. There was the snake that crawls and the snake that climbs. There were birds, and young men like whips of leather, like rainshafts in the sun, like spears before a singiri.
    ‘Amin yut!’ the young men would say, ‘that is no buffalo spoor, Lakweit. Here! Bend down and look. Bend down and look at this mark. See how this leaf is crushed. Feel the wetness of this dug. Bend down and look so that you may learn!’
    And so, in time, I learned. But some things I learned alone.
    There was a place called Elkington’s Farm by Kabete Station. It was near Nairobi on the edge of the Kikuyu Reserve, and my father and I used to ride there from town on