Free West with the Night by Beryl Markham Page A

great baobob tree rolling down a slope, and it seems that because of this it was not possible for him to explain the thought of his mind to the soles of his feet in a sufficient quickness of time to prevent him from rushing much closer to the lion than in his heart he wished to be.
    ‘And it was this circumstance, as I am telling it,’ said Bishon Singh, ‘which in my considered opinion made it possible for you to be alive, Beru.’
    ‘Bwana Elkington rushed at the lion then, Bishon Singh?’
    ‘The lion, as of the contrary, rushed at Bwana Elkington,’ said Bishon Singh. ‘The lion deserted you for the Bwana, Beru. The lion was of the opinion that his master was not in any honest way deserving of a portion of what he, the lion, had accomplished in the matter of fresh meat through no effort by anybody except himself.’
    Bishon Singh offered this extremely reasonable interpretation with impressive gravity, as if he were expounding the Case For the Lion to a chosen jury of Paddy’s peers.
    ‘Fresh meat’ … I repeated dreamily, and crossed my fingers.
    ‘So then what happened …?’
    The Sikh lifted his shoulders and let them drop again ‘What could happen, Beru? The lion rushed for Bwana Elkington, who in his turn rushed from the lion, and in so rushing did not keep in his hand the long kiboko, but allowed it to fall upon the ground, and in accomplishing this the Bwana was free to ascend a very fortunate tree, which he did.’
    ‘And you picked me up, Bishon Singh?’
    He made a little dip with his massive turban. ‘I was happy with the duty of carrying you back to this very bed, Beru, and of advising your father, who had gone to observe some of Bwana Elkington’s horses, that you had been moderately eaten by the large lion. Your father returned very fast, and Bwana Elkington some time later returned very fast, but the large lion has not returned at all.’
    The large lion had not returned at all. That night he killed a horse, and the next night he killed a yearling bullock, and after that a cow fresh for milking.
    In the end he was caught and finally caged, but brought to no rendezvous with the firing squad at sunrise. He remained for years in his cage, which, had he managed to live in freedom with his inhibitions, he might never have seen at all.
    It seems characteristic of the mind of man that the repression of what is natural to humans must be abhorred, but that what is natural to an infinitely more natural animal must be confined within the bounds of a reason peculiar only to men — more peculiar sometimes than seems reasonable at all.
    Paddy lived, people stared at him and he stared back, and this went on until he was an old, old lion. Jim Elkington died, and Mrs. Elkington, who really loved Paddy, was forced, because of circumstances beyond her control or Paddy’s, to have him shot by Boy Long, the manager of Lord Delamere’s estates.
    This choice of executioners was, in itself, a tribute to Paddy, for no one loved animals more or understood them better, or could shoot more cleanly than Boy Long.
    But the result was the same to Paddy. He had lived and died in ways not of his choosing. He was a good lion. He had done what he could about being a tame lion. Who thinks it just to be judged by a single error?
    I still have the sears of his teeth and claws, but they are very small now and almost forgotten, and I cannot begrudge him his moment.

VI
Still Is the Land
    T HE FARM AT NJORO was endless, but it was no farm at all until my father made it. He made it out of nothing and out of everything — the things of which all farms are made. He made it out of forest and bush rocks, new earth, sun, and torrents of warm rain. He made it out of labour and out of patience.
    He was no farmer. He bought the land because it was cheap and fertile, and because East Africa was new and you could feel the future of it under your feet.
    It looked like this at first: It was a broad stretch of land, part of it open valley,