That I could see was almost the only proof I had that life continued. For a time all else was cut off.
The lion, getting up on his back legs, struck again at the dipping net. It was now within reach and he caught his claws in the vines. Before he could pull free the king let fall the trap. The rope streaked down from the pulley, the weights rumbled on the boards like a troop of horses, and the cone fell on the lion’s head. I was lying on my belly, with my arm stretched out toward the king, but he came to the edge of the platform unhelped by me and cried, “What do you think! Henderson, what do you think!”
The beaters screamed. The lion should have been carried to the ground by the weight of the stones, but he was still standing nearly upright. He was caught on the head, and his forepaws spread out the vines and he fell, fighting. His hindquarters were not caught in the net. The air seemed to grow dark in the pit of the hopo from his roaring. I lay with my hand still extended to the king, but he didn’t take it. He was looking downward at the netted face of the lion, the maned belly and armpits, which brought back to me the road north of Salerno and myself being held by the medics and shaved from head to foot for crabs.
“Does it look like Gmilo? Your Highness, what’s your guess?” I said. I didn’t understand the situation one bit.
“Oh, it is wrong,” the king said.
“What’s wrong?”
He was startled by a realization of something I had so far missed. I was stunned by the roars and screams of the cap — ture, and watched the terrible labor of the legs, and the claws black and yellow which issued like thorns from the great pads of the lion’s feet.
“You’ve got him. What the hell. What now?”
But now I understood what was the matter, for nobody could approach the animal to examine his ears; he was able to turn beneath the net, and, his hindquarters being free, you couldn’t get near him.
“Rope his legs, somebody,” I yelled.
The Bunam was below and signaled upward with his ivory stick. The king pushed off from the edge of the platform and took hold of the rope which had been stopped in the pulley by a knot. The overhead pole was bucking and dancing as he got hold of the frayed tail of the rope. He hauled at it, and the pulley started to scream. The lion was incompletely caught, and the king was going to try to work the net over the animal’s hindquarters.
I called to him, “King, think it over once. You can’t do it. He weighs half a ton, and he’s got a solid grip on the net.” I didn’t realize that only the king could remedy the situation and no one could come between him and the lion, as the lion might be the late King Gmilo. Thus it was entirely up to the king to complete the capture. The pummeling of the drums and the bugling and stone-throwing had stopped, and from the crowd there was only a shout now and then heard when the lion was not roaring. Individual voices were commenting to the king on the situation, which was a bad one.
I stood up saying, “King, I’ll go down and look at his ear, just tell me what to look for. Hold it, King, hold.” But I doubt whether he heard me. His legs were wide apart in the center of the pole, which bowed deeply and swung and swayed under the energetic movement of his legs, and the rope and pulley and the block made cries as if resined, and the stone weights clattered on the planks. The lion fought on his back and the whole construction swayed. Again I thought the entire hopo tower would collapse and I gripped the straw behind me. Then I saw some smoke or dust above the king and realized that this came from the fastenings of hide that held the block of the pulley to the wood. The king’s weight and the pull of the lion had been too much for these fastenings. One had torn, that was the puff I saw. And now the other went.
“King Dahfu!” I yelled out.
He was falling. Block and pulley smashed down on the stone before the fleeing beaters. The king had fallen onto the lion. I saw the convulsion of the animal’s hindquarters. The claws tore. Instantly there came blood, before the king could throw himself over. I now hung from the edge of the platform by my fingers, hung and then fell, shouting as I went. I wish this had been the eternal pit. The king had rolled himself from the lion. I pulled him farther away. Through the torn clothing his blood sprang out.
“Oh, King! My friend!” I covered up my face.
The king said, “Wo, Sungo.” The surfaces of his eyes were strange. They had thickened.
I took off my green trousers to tie up the wound. These were all I had to hand, and they did no good but were instantly soaked.
“Help him! Help!” I said to the crowd.
“I did not make it, Henderson,” the king said to me.
“Why, King, what are you talking about? We’ll carry you back to the palace. We’ll put some sulfa powder into this and stitch you up. You’ll tell me what to do, Your Majesty, being the doctor of us two.”
“No, no, they will never take me back. Is it Gmilo?”
I ran and caught the rope and pulley and threw the wooden block like a bolo at the still thrusting legs; I wound the rope around them a dozen times, almost tearing the skin from them and yelling, “You devil! Curse you, you son of a bitch!” He raged back through the net. The Bunam then came and looked at the ears. He reached back and called authoritatively for something. His man in the dirty white paint handed him a musket and he put the muzzle against the lion’s temple. When he fired the explosion tore part of the creature’s head away.
“It was not Gmilo,” the king said.
He was glad his blood would not be on his father’s head.
“Henderson,” he said, “you will see no harm comes to Atti.”
“Hell, Your Highness, you’re still king, you’ll take care of her yourself.” I began to cry.
“No, no, Henderson,” he said. “I cannot be … among the wives. I would have to be killed.” He was moved over these women. Some of them he must have loved. His belly through the torn clothing looked like a grate of fire and some of the beaters were already giving death shrieks. The Bunam stood apart, he kept away from us.
“Bend close,” said Dahfu.
I squatted near his head and turned my good ear toward him, the tears meanwhile running between my fingers, and I said, “Oh, King, King, I am a bad-luck type. I am a jinx, and death hangs around me. The world has sent you just the wrong fellow. I am contagious, like Typhoid Mary. Without me you would have been okay. You are the noblest guy I ever met.”
“It’s the other way around. The shoe is on the other foot … The first night you were here,” he explained as a fellow will under the creeping numbness, “that body was the former, the Sungo before you. Because he could not lift Mummah …” His hand was bloody; he put thumb and forefinger weakly to his throat.
“They strangled him? My God! And what about that big fellow Turombo, who couldn’t pick her up? Ah, he didn’t want to become the Sungo, it’s too dangerous. It was wished on me. I was the fall guy. I was had.”
“Sungo also is my successor,” he said, touching my hand.
“I take your place? What are you talking about, Your Highness!”
Eyes closing, he nodded slowly. “No child of age, makes the Sungo king.”
“Your Highness,” I said, and raised my weeping voice, “what have you pulled on me? I should have been told what I was getting into. Was this a thing to do to a friend?”
Without reopening his eyes, but smiling in his increasing weakness the king said, “It was done to me …”
Then I said, “Your Majesty, move over and I’ll die beside you. Or else be me and live; I never knew what to do with life anyway, and I’ll die instead.” I began to rub and beat my face with my knuckles, crouching in the dust between the dead lion and the dying king. “The spirit’s sleep burst too late for me. I waited too long, and I ruined myself with pigs. I’m a broken man. And I’ll never make out with the wives. How can I? I’ll follow you soon. These guys will kill me. King! King!”