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 THE
LAST ASSASSIN
Also by Peter Stothard

Thirty Days

On the Spartacus Road

Alexandria

The Senecans
 THE
L A ST A S SA SSI N
THE HUNT FOR THE KILLERS
OF JULIUS CAESAR

PETER STOTHARD

3
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
© Peter Stothard 2021
First published in the United Kingdom by
Orion Publishing Group Ltd., London 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress
ISBN 978–0–19–752335–3 (hbk.)
135798642
Printed by Sheridan Books, United States of America
To Ruth
 CONTENTS

Prologue. The monster on the path 1

1. THROUGH CAESAR’S COUNTRY 15

2. PARMENSIS AND THE FIRST ASSASSINS 24
3. CICERO’S STAGE, PORCIA’S PEOPLE 37
4. ASSASSINATION DAY 49
5. A LIST OF MANY NAMES 64
6. ENTRY OF A YOUNG HUNTER 75
7. TREBONIUS UNDER TORTURE 88
8. DECIMUS BESIEGED 96
9. PARMENSIS AT SEA 110
10. BASILUS MEETS HIS SLAVES 115
11. CASSIUS AND BRUTUS 134
12. THE CIMBER BROTHERS 144
13. HUNTED TENT BY TENT 159
14. SEXTUS, HONORARY ASSASSIN 165
15. ABUSE AT PERUSIA 174
16. PARMENSIS ALONE 187
17. KILL EVERY KILLER 195
18. SEXTUS BETRAYED 202
19. A MAN WITH A WHITE FACE 214
20. PARMENSIS’S LAST STAND 222
21. A BATTLE THAT NEVER WAS 230
22. TURULLIUS, CUTTER OF TREES 239
23. THE LAST ASSASSIN 241

Sources 247
Bibliography 260
Acknowledgements 262
List of Illustrations 263
Index 264
 MAIN CHARACTERS

ASSASSINS

CASSIUS PARMENSIS (c75–30 BC): Poet, playwright, naval

commander, longest surviving assassin of Julius Caesar. Epicurean.
Executed in retirement in Athens.

GAIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS (c86–42): Philosopher, politician,

general, joint leader of the assassins. Husband of Marcus Brutus’s
sister. Epicurean. Committed suicide after first defeat at Philippi.

MARCUS BRUTUS (85–42): Orator, politician, idealist, gener-

al, joint leader of the assassins. Son of Caesar’s mistress, Servilia.
Committed suicide after second defeat at Philippi.

DECIMUS JUNIUS BRUTUS (c83–43): General, military innova-

tor, closest friend to Caesar among the assassins. Killed on orders of
Mark Antony while in flight to join Brutus and Cassius.

GAIUS TREBONIUS (c92–43): General for Caesar, editor and

anthologist of Cicero. Tortured by Dolabella. First of the assassins
to be killed.

PUBLIUS SERVILIUS CASCA (c84–42): Senator, People’s

Tribune. Striker of the first blow in Caesar’s assassination.

TILLIUS CIMBER (c80–42): Impetuous naval commander.

Embittered by failed petition to Caesar on behalf of his exiled
brother.

PONTIUS AQUILA (c80–43): Independent-minded banker, sol-

dier, aide to Decimus Brutus. Angered by the confiscation of his
x TH E LAS T AS S AS S IN

land for Caesar’s mistress, Servilia. Killed in battle against Mark

Antony.

LUCIUS MINUCIUS BASILUS (c80–43): Military aide to Caesar.

Frustrated by lack of promotion. Killed by his slaves during the
Proscriptions against the assassins.

QUINTUS LIGARIUS (c80–43): Supporter of Pompey in the civil

war against Caesar. Spared by Caesar after persuasion by Cicero.
Hunted under the Lex Pedia.

SERVIUS SULPICIUS GALBA (c80–c43): Officer for Caesar.

Insulted by Caesar’s affair with his wife and a disputed debt. Hunted
under the Lex Pedia.

PACUVIUS LABEO: (c85–42): Lawyer close to Marcus Brutus.

Committed suicide at Philippi.

DECIMUS TURULLIUS (c75–31): Assassin and naval commander

with Cassius Parmensis. Executed on Octavian’s orders in Cos after
the battle of Actium.

SUPPORTERS

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO (106–43): Orator, philosopher,

politician. Sympathiser with the assassins. Enemy of Mark Antony.
Executed on orders of Antony and Octavian.

SEXTUS POMPEIUS (67–36): Younger son of Caesar’s last rival,

Pompey the Great. Independent naval commander. Joined by
Cassius Parmensis and defeated by Octavian in one of the great sea
battles of antiquity.
 xi

QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS, Horace (65–8): Poet.

Supporter of Marcus Brutus. Fighter at Philippi. Subsequently
crosses to the side of Octavian.

SERVILIA (c100–c40): Mother of Marcus Brutus, lover of Caesar.

Wealthy and influential operator in the assassins’ cause.

PORCIA (70–43): Wife of Marcus Brutus and daughter of Caesar’s

enemy, Cato. Powerful spur to the assassination.

AVENGERS

CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR OCTAVIANUS, Octavian (63 BC–14

AD): Adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar. Prime mover of the
hunt for the assassins through the Lex Pedia and the terror of the
Proscriptions. Future Emperor Augustus.

MARCUS ANTONIUS, Mark Antony (83–30): Heir to Caesar’s

cause until the arrival of Octavian. Initial negotiator with Cicero of
an amnesty for the assassins. Drawn by Octavian down a competi-
tive course of vengeance.

MARCUS AEMILIUS LEPIDUS (c89–c13): General for Caesar,

aristocrat. Third member of the Triumvirate that avenged Caesar’s
death. Removed before the final confrontation between Octavian
and Mark Antony.

LUCIUS ANTONIUS (c75–c39): Brutal younger brother of Mark

Antony. Destroyer of Parma. Defeated by Octavian in the siege of
Perusia.

PUBLIUS CORNELIUS DOLABELLA (69–43): Dissolute street

agitator for Caesar. Sometime son-in-law of Cicero.
xii TH E LAS T AS S AS S IN
xiii
 PROLOGUE

THE MONSTER ON THE PATH

Epicurus, detail from The School of Athens, Raphael (1509–11)

From a half-closed window the hills of Athens rose ragged against

the haze. The fires down below belonged to those who had not been
in the city long. The summer dawn was crackling with the sound of
sometime soldiers – and of cicadas and of birds awaking high amid
pale-painted marble, the light crunch of lizards on leaves, a thin
curtain of noise.
The night wind still blew out to sea, soon about to turn as the
land warmed and the day winds began. The last thin scent of sul-
phur rolled off the Acropolis slopes.
Cassius Parmensis was in bed in a small house behind a boarded
door. He was a sailor, poet and playwright and Athens was being
2 TH E LAS T AS S AS S IN

good to him. For the last surviving assassin of Julius Caesar, a year
after his last battle, this ever more crowded city was arguably the
very best place of retirement. Every dawn was a surprise. Athenian
dawns were some of the most perfumed and orange-pink. It was
small wonder that so many people came here.
Parmensis, named for his family’s home in Parma, near where
Italy then met Gaul, had been one of the lesser wielders of the dag-
gers on the Ides of March, one of the common herd of conspirators,
not a Brutus, not the other more famous Cassius, those men who
were dead and already entering history. While, like others in the
conspiracy, Parmensis was a writer of history himself, his name was
not yet a part of it.
In his early forties, he was old enough respectably to retire. But,
at a time when Caesar’s angry heir ruled supreme, he could not
return to Italy, not to Rome, not to his once fertile home between
the Rubicon and Po rivers. In the streets below the Acropolis,
Parmensis had new admirers, a few former brothers-in-arms, even
some readers for his poems and plays.
Fourteen years after the assassination that had failed to change
the world, Athens was still a favoured place for writers, for dissi-
dents and theorists, for stubborn dreamers, recent veterans who
wrote of battles lost and old soldiers who told them how they could
have won. Through its past it offered a kind of asylum.
Words and swords still stood side by side in the battle to be
remembered. Particularly towards the end of a man’s life the writ-
ing of a poem might mean more than all the killings and fail-
ures to kill. A great last act might be more than just the end of a
play. His new home suited well the remaining hopes of Cassius
Parmensis.
Athens, like so many of its night-time visitors, was a city whose
best years were behind it, a sheltered home for many other Romans
like himself, men of the navy and the minor arts, educated citizens
who, while they had not themselves been prepared (or asked) to
thrust their daggers into Caesar’s corpse, preferred some sort of
freedom to any sort of one-man rule. The best ideals of ancient
 THE MO NS T ER O N TH E PATH 3

Greece, however hazy, stood out brightly against what their own
country had become.
Athenians were fickle. They might unite to fight Romans or divide
and back one Roman side against another. That had long been their
way. But every cultured man felt better in the city where the works
of Homer were first put in writing, the city of Aeschylus, Euripides,
Socrates and Plato. Parmensis himself followed the philosophy of
Epicurus, famed for his Athenian garden, dead for more than two
hundred years but influential in Athens and far beyond. The poet
from Parma who became a sea captain never claimed originality.
He did like to be consistent. He was thorough. That was what ships
and poetry demanded.
His last fight at sea had been at Actium, the year before, 31 BC,
two hundred miles to the north and west of Athens, the last battle
of the civil war that began with the daggers of Parmensis and his
fellow assassins. This last battle had been between the two leaders of
what was once a single alliance, those who had stuck to the cause of
Caesar beyond his death before ending by fighting each other. Men
who cared little for politics (a large number even in Athens) occa-
sionally asked him how this had happened. It was easy to explain
but not always easy to understand.
Mark Antony, Caesar’s veteran brother-in-arms, and Octavian,
Caesar’s young great-nephew, had together defeated the leading
assassins at Philippi in eastern Greece. That was the hard part. Then
they had moved on to a war against each other on the west side. The
prize was the supremacy that Caesar seemed to have bequeathed. It
was like a mad game of chequers where the last black pieces, having
conquered the white, go black-on-black. Actium was the last corner
of the board.
Parmensis had fought at Actium for Antony and Cleopatra, for
Caesar’s friend and the fabulously wealthy queen who had been the
mistress of Caesar and Antony in turn. He had no great love for
those he had served, only a very great loathing of the ‘the divine
Caesar’s son’, the title that Octavian, who after Actium could also
become emperor of Rome, had long ago given to himself.
4 TH E LAS T AS S AS S IN

This battle of the last black pieces had been barely even a fight.
That was clearer in retrospect even than it had been at the time.
Cleopatra had fled from Actium at the first whiff of defeat. Antony,
a shadow of the man who helped Caesar conquer Gaul, had meekly
followed her. Once worshipped as a god at Athens, he had become
more like a dog.
Parmensis had afterwards lived quietly through the year of
Octavian’s last moves to imperial power, the year in which the last
remnants of opposition were hunted down and destroyed. He rec-
ognised the dangers to himself from the moment he arrived in
Athens. He did not know how very close the danger was.
He knew about fear, its ubiquity, its necessity, its smell, and was
gradually getting to know more. For the past fourteen years he had
felt safest at sea. When he was commanding men at war around
Cyprus and Sicily, ramming and boarding Octavian’s ships, or fol-
lowing the voyages of Homer’s Odysseus as a poet might prefer to
say, he was almost secure. On land, as night turned to dawn, he was
much easier prey if his predator so chose.
Not only had Octavian defeated all his enemies: Cassius
Parmensis had fought for each of those enemies in turn, in the
navies of Caesar’s killers and then, with varying zeal, for each of the
rivals who wanted to stop a dynasty of Caesars. As civil war turned
to peace Parmensis was for the first time alone.
He might possibly be safe in Athens among the mass of refugees
and losers in the wars. His death ought hardly to be a priority for
the new sole ruler of the Roman world. It would merely bring a
stuttering story to an end.
And yet, that end might be no small thing. Octavian might desire
and demand it. As a playwright Parmensis saw professionally the
purpose of endings. He had ample time to reflect.
In Athens he could read his own poetry, and that of his friends,
in what was almost peace. The city around him was the best place
anywhere for buying words, in Latin and in Greek, ancient and
modern, easy replacements for all the papyrus rolls he had lost on
his campaigns. He could read the epics of Homer and the great
 THE MO NS T ER O N TH E PATH 5

tragedies, the Iliad on anger, the Odyssey on survival, Aeschylus on

vengeance, Sophocles and Euripides on mothers murdering their
children in revenge. He had by his hand the best plays written in
Latin, by the master of comic darkness, Titus Maccius Plautus, born
not far from Parma, by Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius, tra-
gedians but neither of them as good as the Greeks. Parmensis was
writing tragedies of his own.
One was a Brutus, not about his dead fellow assassin but about
rape and suicide in the early history of Rome. Another was a Thyestes,
part of the most vicious vengeance cycle in the Greek myths that
came before the beginning of history. Thyestes was the brother of
Atreus, both men rival claimants to the throne of Mycenae, not far
from Athens to the west: Thyestes was tricked by Atreus into eating
his own children, an act that unleashed a chain of killings until the
goddess Athena, dea ex machina in her own city, brought the cycle
to an end.
This was the art of civil war. In the Greek dramas of Agamemnon,
Clytemnestra and their daughter, Electra – and those of child-mur-
dering Medea and Tereus, Thracian rapist of his wife’s sister, and
many more – lay few lessons of forgiveness, far more screams, curses
and the cutting of tongues. A comedy by Plautus exposed the reality
of chains, collars and whips. Every play was in its own roll made
from papyrus reeds, each one about a foot high, all the columns of
text leaning to the right, toppling and tumbling in the strange way
preferred by scribes, horror falling upon horror.
In Athens Parmensis was a reader and a writer rather than any
longer an actor in great events. All around him in the summer of
30 BC the view was changing. The land might as well be sea, its
storms stirring in every direction as if from nowhere. Literature was
as changeable as the rest of life. Alongside their Euripides, Homer
and ancient Latin, the poetry sellers for students offered popular
new Latin words from Virgil, Varius and Parmensis’s fellow fighter,
Horace, greater poets than he, as everyone agreed, also much great-
er at surviving.
The only one of these he knew personally was Horace, not
6 TH E LAS T AS S AS S IN

well but well enough. The two men, tied by youthful loyalties and
buoyed by old ideals, had been on the same side against Octavian
and Antony. Horace had fought alongside Caesar’s assassins on land
at Philippi, north and east of Athens where Greece met Asia, in the
blood and dirt when so many heroes died. But twelve years had
passed since then and Horace had been swiftly seduced into the
service of Caesar’s son; he was already becoming as feted and famed
as Parmensis was not.
The Athenians themselves were turning. This had been the city
most enthusiastic for Brutus and Cassius. The senior killers of
Caesar had once been compared to the city’s own greatest heroes
and remembered in marble. Instead, in the sculpture gardens
around the Acropolis there were new monuments to the mercy of
the young Octavian Caesar, bright against those older stones.
That massive charioteer in charge of four giant horses was slated
to be a new tribute to Octavian’s admiral, Marcus Agrippa: it still
represented a neighbouring king and Olympic champion, but not
for much longer. Agrippa was Octavian’s closest friend, the man
who had prosecuted assassins in the courts of Rome before taking
to the seas and winning bigger battles for his master. Athenians who
had paid tax to Brutus and Cassius, danced with Cleopatra, watched
Antony marry the goddess Athena, claimed barely to remember
them.
Parmensis could have run from Athens but he preferred to wait.
Nowhere would be safe from betrayers and everywhere would be
less comfortable. Near his house, on every day that came, he could
pass the remains of Epicurus’s gardens, paying homage to the Greek
philosopher who had taught every Roman of taste how to avoid the
fear of death and how, once that fear was banished, every other part
of life was enhanced.
Julius Caesar’s last assassin knew his Epicurus well. So had
Caesar himself, and Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Cassius and
other dead men in his story. Critics said that philosophy was drift-
ing into self-absorption, the search for mere contentment through
self-control, forgetful of disintegrating control over government.
 THE MO NS T ER O N TH E PATH 7

But a philosophy of calm, with no fear of punishments in an under-

world, was seen by Epicureans as a help to anyone, within a society
and within oneself.
Parmensis had been a public man. He had lived a public, prac-
tical life. But just as important for any follower of Epicurus was
knowing that preparedness for death was the principal purpose of
living; that rejecting the fear of death was a skill of logic, a lesson
that could be learnt; that after death there was no self to be harmed,
therefore neither a reason to fear nor an entity about which fear was
possible. Only the material was real. Any gods were infinitely far
away. He knew all that. He absolutely knew it.
But then again, like all student Epicureans, Parmensis knew
that knowledge was not enough. There was something about being
human that maintained old prejudices, the sense of the supernatural
and the fear of the unknown, strong against all the power of reason.
He had seen long and agonising exits from life. Not everyone could
die as quickly as Caesar had. The only remedy for doubt was repe-
tition and more repetition, the chanting that was the reinforcement
of logic in pupils’ minds. Classes in outstaring death were another
good reason for living in Athens.
Beneath the fading dawn the ground was pale and grey. Rome
had parks; Athens had only ground. The silver under an olive leaf
was a startling colour in the summer in the hillside gardens where
nothing else grew. For refugees ready to eat grass there was no grass.
In the woods beneath the sweating pines and dusty oaks the orchids
were gone. The air was filled with scent of fading herbs. Above the
ground were only dead leaves, beneath them the bulbs and tubers
that would show life again in October.
All of Caesar’s other assassins were dead. It was hard to be abso-
lutely sure but it was hard to be absolutely sure of anything. Gaius
Trebonius was the first to die, terribly, horribly tortured, his head
kicked against a wall for sport; Decimus Turullius was the latest.
There were so many deaths from vengeance in between. The brave
drunkard Tillius Cimber was probably dead. Parmensis couldn’t be
sure.
8 TH E LAS T AS S AS S IN

Turullius was the last victim whose fate he knew. A minor

Roman on the day of Caesar’s death, he too became a captain of
ships. Together they had repaired floating hulks, built and rebuilt,
extorted a useful fleet for the assassins from the treasuries of the
Greek islands. After the loss of Brutus and Cassius at the brutal
twin battles of Philippi, they had taken their ships into the service
of Octavian’s menacing enemy at sea, Sextus Pompeius, son of Julius
Caesar’s rival and son-in-law, Pompey the Great. These were family
wars as well as wars of ideas and the world. After Sextus’s defeat,
pursuit and execution, he and Turullius had turned to Antony for a
final chance of victory.
Since then Turullius had been executed too, the most recent of so
many, on the Greek island of Cos, charged by Octavian’s men with
cutting down wood from a sacred grove to build a mast. Everyone
knew that this had not been his capital crime. While Octavian
still had the top assassins in his sights, he had made his need for
vengeance clear. But when the victor was closing on the last of his
father’s killers he preferred to give other reasons to kill. The job was
almost done. The new message was peace and healing.
A full list of the assassins might have been of nineteen men, or
twenty-three, sixty, eighty. Octavian did not know. Parmensis did
not precisely know. The plot to kill Caesar had been hasty as well
as a long time coming, its method and ideals a mixture of the new
as well as very old. So much was so hazy. Only one thing was clear.
Caesar’s grip had been like a gaoler’s. Although the assassins had all
been desperate to escape, freedom from captivity had not brought
the different freedoms that they sought.
While counting numbers had hardly mattered before Caesar’s
last appearance at the senate on the Ides of March, secrecy had been
essential, only barely successful enough. Betrayal was a risk as late
as the first blows, when Tillius Cimber, heavy and clumsy, his peti-
tion in his hand, had tugged at Caesar’s toga, when Servilius Casca
had thrust his dagger. Or so it was said. Maybe it was the other
Casca. There were so many Cascas. Parmensis had not seen all the
acts. Was Marcus Brutus next? Probably not; he was a fastidious
 THE MO NS T ER O N TH E PATH 9

assassin. Or was it Decimus his more military distant cousin, or

Gaius Cassius, the true leader of the conspiracy as many claimed,
although leadership, once the dictator was dead, was what had been
lacking most?
Parmensis had struck his own dagger blow but whether it was
on the body of Caesar or one of his fellow killers he could not be
sure. No one could be sure. All that most witnesses remembered,
as though the act were an hour ago, was the blood on so much fine
linen, the streams of red on white, like the misty end of a drinking
party, no not quite like that. What it was like then was nothing like
what it became.
He could not begin to order the names of those who had used
their weapons while the seats of the senate hall were filling, fourteen
years before, when so many eyes were turned elsewhere. By contrast
he could name with naval precision the order in which the conspir-
ators had themselves been killed. There was quickly a clear list of
those, not necessarily complete or the same as those who had done
the killing but definitively of those deemed guilty.
Some were gone within a year. Gaius Trebonius, a very liter-
ary senator, was tortured to death by one of Julius Caesar’s most
dissolute creatures, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, at the Asian port
of Smyrna. Dolabella was a slug, a sot, a charmer and a shameless
changer of sides; Parmensis had found himself both for and against
him at different times.
Pontius Aquila, a banker not so well known, was killed fighting
Antony in the swamps of Mutina not far from Parma, a great prize
for any soldier who could claim the deed. Decimus Brutus, Caesar’s
friend and deemed the greatest traitor of them all, died a few weeks
later at the hands of a Gallic chief looking for favours from Rome
and probably finding them.
At first there was supposed to be an amnesty for all the conspira-
tors but soon there wasn’t. He knew exactly why. It was complicated.
He could explain it when anyone asked. It was a common question.
On the afternoon of the assassination Antony had been as dip-
lomatic at Rome as he had been a devastating fighter in Gaul. He
10 TH E LAS T AS S AS S IN

soon agreed a deal. Octavian was different. He wanted a hunt for

his father’s killers, one by one, whatever it took. So did the voters of
Rome and Caesar’s soldiers. Antony followed. There was soon a list
of assassins, a court, laws to protect the hunters. Those wanting a
quieter life found the quiet harder to find.
Most knew only a part of what was happening. Battles were
fought whose combatants knew nothing of other battles on which
their fate depended. Speeches were delivered, edited and reedited.
Only afterwards did a whole story come, though not the whole that
Parmensis would have written himself.
There were gaps, so many spaces between what was known and
what was hidden. Parmensis did not know what was in the gaps.
Maybe no one knew. Antony and Octavian were divided and
united in turn, uniting to kill and steal from other Romans, divid-
ing to kill and steal from each other. Parmensis stayed at Rome, and
then in the Italian countryside and then out at sea, watching and
fighting and writing to Marcus Tullius Cicero before Cicero too,
a sympathiser but not an assassin, was killed, his head severed by
a hesitant soldier, his hands and tongue nailed high in the Forum.
Understanding was hard. In the last hours of Athenian night to
count further down the list was simpler.
Sickly Quintus Ligarius had hated Caesar because Caesar had
pardoned him. He was no proud aristocrat. Like Cicero, he had
made his own way up the ladder of life and all the more prized
such status as he had. Caesar’s notorious clemency could destroy a
man’s dignity; it was quite a common cause for hate. Ligarius had
two brothers. Their names were entered on varying lists of those to
be killed, either for what they had done or for what could be stolen
from them, some to be slaughtered in the streets, others dragged
from hiding places in ovens and rivers. There were many such
stories.
Then came the two battles at Philippi, twenty days apart, thirty
months after the assassination: those at least were fixed dates and
facts, in a fixed place on the Roman road from Greece to Asia. Gaius
Cassius, soldier, sailor, scholar, was panicked to take his own life
 THE MO NS T ER O N TH E PATH 11

but lucky enough to take it before Octavian could take an aveng-

er’s pleasure. That was during the first battle, the critical day, when
Romans killed Romans as never before.
After the second round at Philippi, Marcus Brutus killed himself
too. Brutus was so stern a man, a poet too, a son of Caesar’s lov-
er, Servilia, maybe Caesar’s own son, some said, so strange a story,
his family tracing itself back to the earliest years of Rome’s glory,
his mind haunted by the ghost he called his evil genius. Parmensis
had an evil genius too, a conscience maybe or a madness. Studying
Epicurus did not always stop the fear of phantoms one could see.
Publius Servilius Casca, striker of perhaps the only fatal blow
among all the wild wielders of daggers, died fighting. Lucius Tillius
Cimber, ever keen on his next job and his next drink, disappeared.
Pacuvius Antistius Labeo, Brutus’s lawyer friend in a time when law
had failed, dug his own grave on the same day. Thousands died at
Philippi, hundreds of them from the first families of Rome. Soldiers
hunted Caesar’s killers tent by tent until slowly the noise of war was
stilled and vengeance, that darkest power of the human spirit, had
vanquished all else.
Afterwards the great cause of the assassins prospered best at sea.
Parmensis had known many days of hope under sail, on land many
fewer until there were none. After Actium quiet came eventually to
every field and bay of battle. Even his own home towns, Parma and
its beleaguered neighbours, gained the peace to rebuild, slowly and
as best they could, what had been so savagely lost.
His friend Turullius was quietly killed for cutting the wrong
trees. And finally there was Parmensis himself, the last assassin, still
waiting with his poetry and plays beside him, a tragedy about the
mythical Thyestes, lured into banqueting on the flesh of his boys,
a play about the not quite as mythical, Lucretia, who was raped
opposing an early tyrant of Rome and avenged by Brutus’s most
famous ancestor, Marcus Junius, a hard act for any hero to follow.
Vengeance lived at the heart of art, and was maybe more under-
standable there.
Also on the shelves were his epigrams, written out in pages of
12 TH E LAS T AS S AS S IN

columns more crooked than his plays, short lines, long lines, lines
leaning this way and that, some of them about Octavian, his satires
on the bakers, pimps and money-lenders in Caesar’s much-vaunted
family tree. These poems might have been a mistake. Without them
the new tyrant of Rome, fully successful where Caesar had almost
been, might have forgotten him. They were not his finest work but
they were at least words he could take to the gods if he died and got
the chance to get his story in first.
But, of course, he did not think that. No, he did not think any-
thing like that. An Epicurean could not countenance such non-
sense. He did not believe in taking one’s words to gods. Even if gods
were to exist, they would not care about him or about Octavian.
The self-styled ‘son of the divine Caesar’ knew that his human deci-
sion alone had made Caesar a god after the Ides of March. Octavian
knew that the deification was a political act, a piece of propaganda
beside so many other pieces. Yet he might still be nervous of poems
about his human past.
Poetry was as flexible as history but more durable. In Athens
men still spoke of his one-time neighbour in Gaul, the poet Helvius
Cinna, killed after Caesar’s funeral by a Roman mob who mistook
him for a forgettable politician, Lucius Cornelius Cinna. There
would soon be many poems about the past fourteen years. Poet to
poet, man of Gaul to man of Gaul: that would be one good way to
tell the story. Cinna would be the start; Parmensis would be the end
of it. In a world made of words he would die a writer’s death.
The time for poetry alone was not, however, quite yet. Octavian
was not celebrating victory by reading. Nor, as his own court poets
claimed, was he reordering the east or reconquering empire. He was
not invading Parthia or Britain. He was still avenging Caesar, rid-
ding Rome even of the hall where Caesar died. He was still oversee-
ing the last deaths of those he deemed his father’s betrayers.
Down below the crowds heaved and another day began. The
wind began to blow from the sea. Up above, behind barred doors as
the cicadas cried to the slowly rising sun, came Parmensis’s last fear,
a dark, dishevelled, bearded giant coming for him step by crunching
 THE MO NS T ER O N TH E PATH 13

step. He called his slaves and asked if anyone else had seen the mon-
ster. They said no. He returned to sleep. There were dried leaves and
flowers, pungent aniseed and other seeds, for nightmares.
He saw the monster again. He called for a lamp. He called
his slaves to stay beside him. The fear returned. Soon afterwards
Octavian’s emissary came.
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
to think of making another start, so we stopped where we were. It
rained hard again during the night, and several of the sheep died. At
daylight we made another attempt to reach our old M’thara camp,
and after an hour’s tramp through the thorn forest we had the
satisfaction of once more emerging upon our old camping-ground. It
was just as windy, and rather more swampy than before, but it was
surrounded by masses of restful green vegetation most grateful to
the senses after the blinding deserts and arid wastes of the Waso
Nyiro.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
AN ELEPHANT HUNT AND AN ATTACK ON
MUNITHU.

We shoot an elephant—Gordon Cumming on elephants—We send to

Munithu to buy food—Song of Kinyala—Baked elephant’s foot
again a failure—The true recipe—Rain—More rain—The man
with the mutilated nose—The sheep die from exposure—
Chiggers—The El’Konono—Bei-Munithu’s insolent message—A
visit from the Wa’Chanjei—George and I march to attack Munithu.
On arriving at our M’thara camp we were agreeably surprised to find
recent elephant spoor all over the place. Some of the tracks were
very large—possibly those of the old bull I had encountered in the
thorn forest. Jumbi, with some of the men, was at once despatched
to N’Dominuki to inform him of our arrival, and to bring back to camp
the loads of equipment and the stores and cattle left in his charge.
About two o’clock in the afternoon a native came into camp with
the news that a couple of elephants were feeding in the thick bush
only a few hundred yards from our camp. Snatching up our rifles, we
hurried out in pursuit. El Hakim carried his ·577 Express, George the
8-bore, and I my ·303. Advancing cautiously through the jungle, we
came up with the animals about 200 yards from camp. It was a very
bad place in which to shoot elephants, as the bush was so thick and
dense as to be almost impenetrable, and it also concealed our
quarry from view. Now and again among the leaves we caught sight
of a patch of brown hide or the tip of an ear, but nothing showed up
well enough to justify a shot, though we were well within twenty
yards of our quarry.
After a long and breathless wait we held a whispered consultation,
and came to the conclusion that we might perhaps have a better
chance from the opposite side. Leaving the native who had warned
us of their presence safely ensconced in the fork of a thorn tree to
watch the elephants, we, accompanied by Ramathani, succeeded in
circumnavigating them, being lucky enough to reach the other side
without being winded. There we found a small ant-hill, from the top of
which we were able to see over the undergrowth. The elephants
were then in plain sight about 150 yards distant. They were both
bulls, one of them a magnificent old fellow with a very large pair of
tusks. The other was a younger animal, with rather smaller ivories.
The old bull was not the one I saw in the thorn forest before, as I had
at first supposed, his tusks being of a different shape, being longer,
but thinner, and not so discoloured. In spite of El Hakim’s knowledge
of woodcraft, we were unable to get any nearer to them, the bush
being too thick and solid. We waited, therefore, for some time,
hoping they would come closer, as they were now between us and
the camp, and what little breeze was stirring was blowing directly
from the camp on to them; and we calculated that on scenting it they
would come down wind, and so nearer to the spot where we lay
concealed. However, they did not seem to mind the proximity of the
camp, although, even from where we were, we could distinctly hear
the men talking.
For two hours by the watch we waited, not daring to move, or
venturing to speak above a whisper. At last we sent Ramathani by a
circuitous route back to camp to call out the men, with instructions
that they were to surround the elephants on every side except that
on which we had taken up our position, and, by making slight noises
in the bush, endeavour to drive them gently down in our direction.
These instructions the men carried out; but to our great alarm the
elephants showed a disposition to break through the line of beaters
on the camp side. Fearing that we should lose them altogether, El
Hakim, contrary to his usual practice, took a shot at the big bull at a
little over a hundred yards. Bang! went the ·577, and a steel-tipped
bullet crashed its way into the elephant’s shoulder. Turning instantly,
he charged in our direction, followed by his companion; but when
within forty yards the left barrel spoke, and they turned aside, and,
smashing through the forest to our left, disappeared, followed by
another shot from El Hakim, which caught the smaller elephant
somewhere in the stern. We set off at top speed in their wake, but at
first they outstripped us, though their tracks were plainly visible in the
soft earth, and at intervals on the path we saw tiny flecks of blood.
The stricken elephant was evidently bleeding internally.
At the end of an hour’s hard going, we could see by the freshness
of the footprints that we were once more getting closer to them. It
therefore behoved us to proceed with great caution, as an old bull
elephant who has been wounded is apt to make himself unpleasant
if it so happens that in the ardour of pursuit the hunter gets at all
careless, and it is most disconcerting, on rounding a bush, to find the
elephant’s head when one expected to see his tail. Suddenly, as we
were creeping silently along, we heard a quick shrill scream of rage,
apparently from the other side of some bushes twenty yards away.
Thinking the wounded beast was about to charge, we hopped aside
out of the path and behind the adjacent bushes with a celerity only to
be acquired under similar circumstances. It was, however, a false
alarm, as, on peering round the bushes, we saw both elephants
standing in the jungle about a hundred yards distant, looking at us.
As soon as we made a move they turned and plunged once more
into the bush, with us in hot pursuit. They, however, crossed a small
stream that flowed through the bush a few hundred yards further on,
and disappeared. When we reached the stream we found it to be so
swollen by the previous few days’ rain as to be unfordable. We
therefore returned to camp and despatched Barri and two others to
follow the elephants, and to send word back to camp when they
stopped once more.
On our return we found N’Dominuki in camp. He greeted us with
every sign of pleasure, and we were just as pleased to see him, as
his conduct during our absence was of the very highest order, and
we regarded him as a very real friend. We had a long talk with him,
and he confirmed the unpleasant news we had heard about the
scarcity of food in M’thara and the hostile attitude of Bei-Munithu.
Just before dusk a report from Barri came to hand to the effect that
the two elephants, after working round in a circle, were now not far
from camp. Once more we set out, and after half an hour’s walk we
reached the place where they were reported to be resting. Creeping
stealthily up, we found that the big bull had succumbed to his
injuries, and lay stretched out on his side quite dead. The other
elephant, very much on the alert, was standing a little way off in the
bush, and George and I immediately set out to try and bag him. He
was, however, much too wary, and aided by the gathering darkness
succeeded in eluding us in the thick bush, so we returned to camp in
the hope that he would return during the night to his dead
companion.
Early next morning, therefore, George and I set out in search of
the other elephant, but he was nowhere to be seen, having evidently
cleared out of the district for good during the night. After breakfast
we went to the spot where the dead elephant lay, in order to chop
out the ivory. He was a magnificent beast. I measured him with the
tape as accurately as possible, and the following are the
measurements which I jotted down in my notebook at the time:—
The distance between two spears planted vertically in the ground,
one in a line with the sole of the foot and the other against the
shoulder as he lay, measured 10 feet 8 inches, which may be taken
as his height. From the forehead to the root of the tail the tape
marked 13 feet 3 inches. Round the girth he measured 18 feet 8
inches; while the circumference of each fore foot totalled up 4 feet 8
inches, though, on measuring the tracks, I found they were fully 5
feet in circumference, an increase due to the expansion of the foot
under the enormous weight of the animal. The tusks weighed 75 lbs.
and 65 lbs. respectively, the lighter tusk having had a piece about 18
inches in length broken off from the end.
On cutting him up we found the steel core of a ·577 bullet in his
chest, which might, from its appearance, have been there for years.
It was of precisely the same pattern as those used by El Hakim, and
as Mr. Neumann, the only man who had shot elephants at M’thara
before, did not, so far as I know, use steel core bullets we came to
the conclusion that it was a bullet which had been fired some two
years previously by El Hakim at the same elephant, which had got
away after being wounded. El Hakim said he had lost one or two
elephants in this bush about that time, after wounding them.
 The bush round North Kenia is very bad for elephant-shooting. It is
terribly thick and leafy, and the elephants themselves very wild.
Neumann, after a fortnight’s unsuccessful hunting in this place,
became altogether disheartened, and, after a thorough trial of the
district, came to the conclusion that he was wasting his time and
strength, and gave up the task as hopeless. I was much interested in
reading in Mark Twain’s “More Tramps Abroad” an extract from
Gordon Cumming’s account of his experiences with an elephant
which he gives in that book. It is such a quaint account, and is in
such contrast to the modern sporting methods and ideas, that I make
no apology for inserting it here:—
“Having planted a bullet in the shoulder-bone of an elephant, and
caused the agonized creature to lean for support against a tree, I
proceeded to brew some coffee. Having refreshed myself, taking
observations of the elephant’s spasms and writhings between the
sips, I resolved to make experiments on vulnerable points, and
approaching very near, I fired several bullets at different parts of its
enormous skull. He only acknowledged the shots by a salaam-like
movement of his trunk, with the point of which he gently touched the
wounds with a striking and peculiar action. Surprised and shocked to
find I was only prolonging the suffering of the noble beast, which
bore its trials with such dignified composure, I resolved to finish the
proceeding with all possible despatch, and accordingly opened fire
on him from the left side. Aiming at the shoulder I fired six shots with
the two-grooved rifle, which must have eventually proved mortal,
after which I fired six shots at the same part with the Dutch six-
pounder. Large tears now trickled down from his eyes, which he
slowly shut and opened, his colossal frame quivered convulsively,
and falling on his side he expired.”
The next day the bulk of the men were still busily engaged in
cutting up the carcase of the elephant, slicing the meat into strips,
which they dried in the sun or in the smoke of their fires. As we were
badly in need of grain food, we decided to send a party of men to
Munithu and Zura to try to buy food, and also to bring back the few
remaining loads of trade goods still in Bei-Munithu’s possession. Our
purpose, as much as anything, was to test the temper of the natives
there, and to see whether Bei-Munithu, now that he had heard of our
safe arrival, was still determined to put his treacherous plans into
execution.
In the mean time the men were busy gorging the elephant meat. A
little M’kamba boy named M’waniki composed a song, which was
sung with great success by a lady named Kinyala, who, with many
others, had on the previous day joined their fortunes to those of our
porters, in many cases deserting their husbands and homes in
M’thara that they might follow the safari to Nairobi, which, to these
poor creatures, was a vast and distant city of a splendour beyond
their wildest dreams. Jumbi had strict orders not to allow any women
in camp, but in spite of our frequent “drives” some of them managed
to conceal themselves and escaped the general clearance. Kinyala
attached herself to the modest and respectable Ramathani, and as
she possessed some personal charms—to the mind of a native—
that individual made no very strenuous objections. Well, Kinyala
sang the song I have already spoken of, and it “caught on”
tremendously; and, as a consequence, it was dinned into our ears
day and night. It ran thus:—
Song of Kinyala.
(Solo) “Wasungu kwenda wapi?
(Omnes) Kwenda kwa Rendili.
(Solo) Kwani kwenda kwa Rendili?
(Omnes) Kwa sababu ya n’gamia.
Wasungu wa’ntaka n’gamia;
Wasungu wa’ntaka kondo ya mafuta;
Huko kwa Rendili n’yama tele-tele.”

Translation.
(Solo) “Where are the white men going?
(Omnes) They are going to the place of the Rendili.
(Solo) Why do they go to the place of the Rendili?
(Omnes) Because of the camels.
The white men want camels;
The white men want fat-tailed sheep;
There in the place of the Rendili is very much meat.”
 The above is a specimen, with a somewhat free translation, of the
half song, half recitative, so dear to the native heart. It is generally
impromptu, and contains at times a certain dry humour and caustic
comment on current events that is quite unexpected.
Thinking that this was a good opportunity of making another trial of
baked elephant’s foot, I caused a large hole to be dug in the centre
of the camp, and a party of men were sent into the forest to gather
sufficient fuel. When the fuel arrived, an immense fire was kindled in
the hole. All day long it burnt, and in the evening we were rewarded
by the sight of a glowing pit filled to the brim with red-hot ashes. With
much trouble (the foot weighed nearly forty pounds, and the furnace
was very hot) we placed the bulky tit-bit in the ashes, and then,
building a large bonfire over it, we considered that we had done our
part of the business, and hopefully awaited developments.
Several times during the ensuing twenty-four hours El Hakim or I
carefully poked the fire with an iron bar in the endeavour to ascertain
whether the foot was cooking properly. We were absolutely certain
that, if it were not burnt to a cinder, it would be at least sufficiently
cooked, and it was in high hopes that we should at last partake of
the reputed dainty, that we disinterred it from the miniature crater on
the following evening. Alas and alack! in spite of all our toil and
trouble it was as indiarubber-like as its predecessor. Twenty-four
hours in the fire had burnt the outside and reduced the foot
somewhat in size, but the rest was as uncooked as if it had never
been near the flame. This result, however, was entirely our own fault,
as, on looking up the subject since, I find that we were entirely wrong
in our method of cooking it. The true recipe, as given by Mr. Foa,[17]
is as follows:—
“Take an elephant’s foot, preferably young and very fresh; remove
the white flesh which covers the bone, and cut it into strips the
thickness of your finger, reminding one of sticks of pâté de
guimauve. Place the appetizing strips for two days in the sun to dry,
and collect the pure fat which exudes from them in the form of clear
oil. To make the dish known as mwendo wa nzou, take one of these
strips, cut it into small pieces, put it into a saucepan containing a little
water, place it on a gentle fire, and renew the water several times.
When a jelly has formed, add to it the oil in which you have browned
a few onions, a little thyme, etc., or an equivalent aromatic plant, one
or two very strong chillies, and let it cook gently for twenty hours, still
adding water when necessary. Serve hot, with manioc flour or grated
biscuit separately.
“N.B.—This dish keeps several days, and only requires re-
warming.”
So far, so good; but as our friend N’Dominuki did not keep a
general store where we might have been able to purchase the few
onions, thyme, and chillies, etc., required, it would not have helped
us much even had we possessed this recipe at the time.
The weather now changed considerably for the worse, the fine,
clear, sunny weather of the Waso Nyiro being succeeded by heavy
rains and cold winds. These rains were nearly two months late, and
the inhabitants of M’thara were half starving in consequence; but
they came now with a vengeance, though they were too late to do
any good to the bean crop. Day after day we endured a steady
downpour, which killed off the sheep by twos and threes every night.
Of the men whom we had sent to buy food in Munithu, half returned
two days later. They reported that Bei-Munithu had refused to sell
any food, though he had more than plenty, and he had also refused
to give up the loads still in his possession. Furthermore, he had
secretly planned to attack them during the night and put them to
death. They had, however, received timely warning from a friendly
native, and so escaped; some of them coming back to us, and the
remainder going on to Zura to see how matters stood at that place.
A strange Swahili accompanied them. He had been one of Dr.
Kolb’s porters, and had been left behind, sick, at Munithu. He asked
permission to return to Nairobi with us, which we readily granted. He
also confirmed the news of Bei-Munithu’s hostility, and his
statements threw light on several little matters which had puzzled us.
It now seemed more than probable that the whole of the G’nainu
affair had been planned by that old rascal in conjunction with the
Wa’gnainu, which would explain why those people were so
completely prepared for us on the morning when we went into their
country to demand our trade goods; and why they opened the attack
without listening to what we had to say.
This Swahili was a peculiar-looking man, as at some time or other
the end of his nose had been bitten off by a hyæna. The voracious
brute had actually dashed up to where he was sleeping with other
men round a fire, and, seizing him, had tried to drag him away. His
companions awoke at his cries, and drove his assailant off with fire-
brands. When the hyæna seized him, it had bitten his face and taken
the end of his nose clean off. When rescued, he searched for and
found the piece, and, sticking it on again, he secured it with a length
of hair or fibre, which he passed over it and tied at the back of his
head; however, the piece slipped and finally grew on to his face an
inch to the left of its proper position, so that he had one nostril
complete and in its right place, while the other grew apparently out of
his cheek. He still kept the piece of fibre tied round it, and could not
be induced to remove it, though the piece of nose was firmly united
to his cheek. El Hakim offered to perform an operation in plastic
surgery and replace it in its rightful position, but he steadfastly
refused, and El Hakim did not press the point. This man turned out to
be a very good drover, and rendered valuable service in that way on
our march down country after leaving M’thara.
On the 18th October, after six days’ continuous downpour, the rain
ceased for a couple of days. Thirty of the sheep had succumbed,
and the others were very sick, as a large number of them were
suffering from the effects of the unaccustomed exposure. As the men
who had gone on to Zura had not returned, we sent Jumbi with
several men to see what had become of them. We were very
anxious to leave M’thara, but we could not venture round West Kenia
without a supply of food in hand, as game might be scarce. The
camp already commenced to smell very badly, as the rain had
soddened the earth and converted it into a bog. The quantity of meat
drying in the smoke of the fires was already six days old, and though
it was relished by the men, we ourselves found the effluvia offensive.
 During our stay large numbers of natives came into camp for
medicine to cure the ulcers caused by “chiggers.” The chigger (Pulex
penetrans) is a species of flea which is in the habit of selecting the
sole of the foot or the flesh under the toe-nails as a place of
residence. Once safely ensconced under the skin, the female
chigger proceeds to lay large numbers of eggs, which are disposed
in the form of a round bag, the size of a pea. The irritation produces
a troublesome ulcer, amidst which the young larvæ appear. Some of
the natives of M’thara had lost many of their toes through these
pests. It was especially sad to see the little children with their feet
horribly lacerated, who were brought into camp for treatment by their
despairing mothers. Under El Hakim’s direction, I made a large
quantity of ointment by mixing iodoform and powdered boric acid
with hippo fat, and this was freely dispensed among the sufferers,
their expressions of gratitude amply repaying us for any trouble we
incurred in relieving them. I myself had been crippled for three weeks
on one occasion by chiggers, and was therefore in a position to feel
for the unfortunate wretches.
An “elkonono,” or native blacksmith, came into camp one day, and
we got him to manufacture a few knives and ornaments for us from
iron which we provided. He took up his quarters, together with a
couple of his wives, in a shelter which we had built for the mules. His
tools were very simple, consisting merely of a flat stone for an anvil,
and a piece of round bar iron, 1½ inches in diameter and about 8
inches in length, slightly flattened at one end, which formed his
hammer. He also possessed a very crude pair of iron pincers.
His forge, which was fed with charcoal, was formed by a hole in
the ground, into which the air was forced from bellows through a
short pipe of baked clay. The bellows consisted of a couple of
goatskins with a clay nozzle at one end. The other end was open,
the sides being sewn to two flat pieces of wood, to which small
straps were attached. One of the blacksmith’s wives thrust her
fingers through these straps, and, opening her hand and at the same
time raising her arm, she filled the goatskin with air. The hand was
then closed and the goatskin sharply compressed by a downward
stroke of the forearm, and the air contained in it was driven out of the
nozzle through the clay pipe into which it was inserted, and so into
the glowing charcoal. She worked a bellows with each hand
alternately, thus providing an almost continuous draught.
Our “elkonono” set to work and toiled away for three days “from
rosy morn till dewy eve,” and at the end of that time had
manufactured two knives and a couple of ornaments. We asked him
if it was not rather slow work, and to our great disgust he remarked,
“Yes, it is true I have not made much for you, but” (proudly) “I have
made knives for all your children!”
On inquiry we found that whenever our backs were turned, our
porters had gone to the “elkonono” either to have a knife made or
repaired, and as a result he had done ten times more work for them
than he had for us, though we were paying him and he was using
our material. Our simple “elkonono,” however, professed ignorance,
saying that he thought that in doing these little jobs for “our children”
he was serving us; which might or might not have been the truth.
A deputation from the Wa’Chanjei came into camp on the 17th of
October. They came ostensibly on a friendly visit, but really to see
how the land lay. After they had spent an hour or two in our camp,
they evidently came to the conclusion that we were quite able to take
care of ourselves, and politely and silently withdrew.
On the 19th of October the rain ceased for a while, to our
immense satisfaction. During the morning Jumbi returned from
Munithu and Zura with the remainder of the men. He had seen Bei-
Munithu and demanded that our loads should be given to him. He
was met by an insolent refusal. In addition, Bei-Munithu sent an
insulting and threatening message to the effect that “If the Wasungu
themselves came to the door of his house with their guns, he would
not give up the loads!”
Jumbi also reported that food was extremely plentiful in both
Munithu and M’thara, but the inhabitants of those places, acting
under instructions from their chiefs, point blank refused to sell us
any.
 ORNAMENTS WORN BY A’KIKUYU WOMEN.
1, 2, 3, 4.Leather belts ornamented with beads and cowrie shells.
 5, 6, 7, 8.Girdles of iron chain and beadwork.
9, 10.Collars of iron chain and beadwork.
11, 12, 13, Necklaces of twisted iron, brass and copper wire, with pendant
14. chain.
15, 16.Armlets of thick brass wire.

The situation was now serious, and after dinner that evening we
held a consultation to decide what was to be done. Leaving M’thara
without a supply of food was out of the question, and to stay in
M’thara was to court disaster. I therefore proposed to El Hakim that I
should proceed to Munithu on the morrow with an armed party,
leaving him in charge of the camp, and make a demonstration in
force at Munithu, and see if that would not bring old Bei Munithu to
his senses, and George volunteered to accompany me. As both El
Hakim and I considered that such a proceeding would not entail any
serious risk, he acquiesced in my proposal. We therefore determined
that El Hakim should stay in command of the camp with one or two
men—who, with himself, would, he hoped, be sufficient to defend it
should it be attacked in our absence—and that George and I, with all
the men who could be spared, should go over and endeavour to
convince Bei-Munithu and Co. that we were better as friends than
enemies.
Accordingly at noon on the following day George and I started for
Munithu. We had sixteen men armed with Sniders, but we were
terribly short of ammunition, possessing not more than seven
cartridges per man, a fact which made the undertaking rather more
hazardous. Considered afterwards, in cold blood, it seems to me to
have been foolish in the extreme to have attempted to penetrate into
a hostile country, so thickly populated as Munithu, with so few men
and so little ammunition; but at the same time there was no help for
it. Luckily, both George and I had a fair number of cartridges. I, as
usual, carried my ·303, but George, whose rifle had once or twice
missed fire, did not see the fun of risking his life with a weapon which
might fail him at a critical moment; so he carried my 20-bore shot-
gun with a supply of ball cartridges. These ball cartridges contained
2½ drams of powder, which propelled a spherical leaden bullet about
the size of an ordinary marble, and a double-barrelled gun using
them was a very ugly weapon up to a couple of hundred yards.
We pushed on till sundown, and camped at a distance from Bei-
Munithu’s village, and turned in early, as we needed all our energy
for the morrow.

FOOTNOTES:
[17] “After Big Game in Central Africa,” by Edward Foa,
F.R.G.S. (Translation from the French by Frederic Lees), 1899,
pp. 59, 60.
 CHAPTER XIX.
FIGHT AT MUNITHU AND DEPARTURE FROM
M’THARA.

Attack on Bei-Munithu’s village—Poisoned arrows—The burning of

the village—The return march—Determined pursuit of the
A’kikuyu—Karanjui—George’s fall—Return to the M’thara Camp
—Interview with Bei-Munithu—His remorse—Departure from
M’thara—Rain—Hyænas—A lioness—Bad country—Whistling
trees—A lion—Increasing altitude—Zebra.
An hour before sunrise we arose, and, giving the men the most
precise instructions to husband their ammunition to the utmost and
leave any shooting to George and myself should it become
necessary, we marched on to Bei-Munithu’s village. The moment we
sighted it, where it stood on the summit of a hill, we rushed forward
with a cheer, and, swarming up the side of the hill, we succeeded in
getting into the village before the inhabitants knew what was
happening. It was captured without a shot being fired, the natives
fleeing out at the other end and into the bush. Instructing the men to
collect as much food as they could carry, I took three or four with me
and made for the huts where our goods were stored. Breaking them
open, we soon had the loads out, and I then proceeded to Bei-
Munithu’s hut. Bei-Munithu himself was nowhere to be seen. On
searching his hut I found a large quantity of our goods stowed away
in odd corners, and I was not at all surprised to find that some of
them were a portion of the goods which were supposed to have
been stolen from Bei-Munithu’s charge by the Wa’gnainu, and in
which that old arch-traitor had evidently gone shares. I also found
and promptly confiscated an old muzzle-loading musket, which was
among his most treasured possessions.
By this time, as the men had collected all our loads of trade goods
and also a few loads of food, I gave the command to retire. As I did
so the phwit! phwit! of poisoned arrows aroused our attention, and a
few of the tiny feathered shafts fell into the village and stuck
quivering in the ground. It was very evident that the A’kikuyu did not
intend to let us get away without a struggle. The men had also
collected a few head of cattle and a large number of sheep and
goats; and as it seemed that we should have to fight, I determined to
make a running fight of it, and make it a good one while we were
about it, and so teach the enemy a lesson, though we were sadly
handicapped for want of Snider ammunition.
When I had got my little force together, I first set fire to the village,
and then formed them up outside. As the enemy would most likely
harass our rear, I took the rearguard myself, putting George in
command of the bulk of the men, with the loads and the captured
stock. I asked him at the same time to see that the men did not fire a
shot till it was absolutely necessary. Barri, the Somali, took the
advance guard of our little column.
By this time the smoke of the burning village and the cries of the
fugitive inhabitants had aroused the whole country-side, and from
the manner in which the war-cries resounded over hill and dale on
every side, we discovered that we were in for a rather rough time.
Our little force therefore moved off in the order described at ten
minutes to eight in the morning, on the return march to M’thara.
The first hour’s march took us through a number of scattered
villages, the inhabitants of which fled on our approach and joined the
ever-growing force which threatened our rear. The villages were built
in the midst of extensive banana plantations, and it was here that the
first symptoms of serious opposition manifested themselves. A
number of warriors concealed among the bananas commenced to
pepper us with poisoned arrows at very short range, though
fortunately none of the men were hit. One bold warrior let fly an
arrow at George at not more than thirty yards, and then, catching my
eye, he subsided behind a banana tree. He did not take into account
the penetrative power of a ·303, and I think he must have been a
very surprised native indeed when my bullet passed through the
pulpy stem of the banana. Another let fly an arrow at the mule, which
was being led, and missed her by an inch. George caught him with
the 20-bore, dropping him, and then, swinging round, stopped
another adventurous warrior who was creeping up to him with the
other barrel, to the native’s intense discomfiture.
After a little more light skirmishing of this description on the route,
we reached a small clearing, and on coming out into the open were
cordially greeted with a shower of arrows from a large number of the
enemy concealed in the bush on the opposite side. A smart fusillade
from our men put a temporary check on the proceedings of this
informal reception committee, and we continued our advance.
Another warrior, who recklessly exposed his person in order to make
insulting remarks with greater effect, retired precipitately with a much
better idea of the theory of projectiles than he had hitherto
possessed; and another who received a spherical ball in the leg at
200 yards from George, ceased to take any further interest in the
proceedings. After this interchange of civilities the enemy kept out of
range for awhile, and allowed us to cross the remainder of the
banana plantations in safety, and into the thick bush on the other
side; however, they were merely gathering reinforcements and
preparing to attack in earnest.
It being, I believe, an axiom of warfare that “a retreating column
should resemble a scorpion and carry its sting in its tail,” I picked out
Resarse ben Shokar and Asmani ben Selim as being two of the
coolest men, and they, together with a boy named Koranja, who
carried my cartridge-bag and binoculars, formed my rearguard.
George, with the main body of the men, had his hands full in
preventing them firing away their few cartridges at the scenery, and
then throwing down their loads and bolting—a proceeding which
would have resulted in immediate and overwhelming disaster.
When we got into the thick bush the enemy tried several times to
rush us, but the bush was as much in our favour as theirs, as it was
too thick for them to use their arrows, for which providential
circumstance I was devoutly thankful. Once or twice some of the
bolder spirits advanced openly along the rearward path in the
endeavour to rush my two men and myself, and cut us off, but the
Lee-Metford is a beautiful weapon under such circumstances, and
they abandoned the attempt. The enemy were constantly increasing
in numbers, and the noise they made with their shouting and war-
cries was terrific. I think they did it to keep their courage up, but it is
a terrible waste of breath. They soon afterwards concentrated in
force on our flanks and rear and tried another rush, but we were able
by judicious shooting to keep them from getting too close.
The bush now ended in a ravine, at the bottom of which was a
small stream. On the opposite bank of the stream was the edge of
the thick forest which I have previously mentioned, and which
extended as far as the open space called Karanjui, an hour’s journey
further on. While George superintended the crossing of the men and
animals, I and my two men squatted down in the bush at a turn in the
path, about a hundred yards in the rear, and prepared a surprise for
the enemy. They were howling in a most unmelodious key, and
between the howls they informed us that they were coming to kill us,
a piece of news which seemed to me to be quite superfluous under
the circumstances; they added the interesting information that they
were going ahead of us into the wood, and were there going to
ambush us. I had already guessed that such was their intention, but I
determined that such an awkward situation should not occur if I
could prevent it. Our men in their turn inquired why, if they were
coming to kill us, did they not come and carry out their intention? It
appears that these exchanges of repartee are part of the ceremonial
of A’kikuyu warfare, though at the time it seemed to me to be very
childish. The enemy then shouted, “Resarse kutire mwaka,” literally,
“Your bullets have no fire;” meaning to say that they did not hurt—
evidently Bei-Munithu’s teaching. They were asked to “come and
see,” an invitation they accepted. My little ambush worked perfectly,
and they were within twenty yards when I opened fire. Two of them
were put out of action at the first discharge, and the others retreated
in disorder, having learnt a wholesome lesson.
A message from George then reached me, informing me that all
the men and animals were now safely across the stream, so I
followed him. Just as I got across the stream in my turn, some of the
enemy, who had crossed higher up, made another rush, one of the
most dangerous they had so far attempted. They got close enough
this time to throw spears, one of which killed an unfortunate goat. I
used my revolver, and George his gun, and they once more retired.
One of the A’kikuyu who threw a spear was shot with an arrow by
one of our Wakamba, who carried a bow and arrows which he had
found in Bei-Munithu’s village. The M’kikuyu’s arm was still uplifted in
the act of throwing the spear when our man’s arrow caught him in
the side of the chest, under the armpit. The light arrow went halfway
through his chest as easily as if he had been made of butter. If I had
not seen it myself, I should not have credited their tiny arrows with
such penetrative power. After crossing the stream we were beyond
the boundary of the Munithu district, and I did not think it probable
that we should be followed any further, as these people do not as a
rule go into the territory of another tribe; but in this case I was
mistaken.
During our march through the forest they made one or two
abortive attempts to close with us, but finally contented themselves
with howling, and, between the howls, threatening what they would
do to us when they got us to Karanjui. It was my intention to try to
reach Karanjui first, so that we might have a reasonable chance of
crossing it before the enemy surrounded us. This we succeeded in
doing, and we were halfway across when the leading warriors,
forsaking the cover of the forest, trooped out into the open about 300
yards away. Asmani and Resarse, for whose conduct I have nothing
but praise, waited behind to assist me in delaying the A’kikuyu, and
so enabling George with the men and cattle to get across and into
the cover of the forest on the other side. One of the enemy, bolder
than the others, climbed on an ant-hill 70 yards distant from me, and
danced at us in derision, making obscene gestures and insulting
remarks. He desisted, however, on receiving a message from the
·303 that he was unable to disregard.
The next move of the enemy was to try to work round the western
edge of Karanjui, which was about 500 yards away, and so get
ahead of us. I took a few long shots at them, and wounded one man
(who I afterwards found out to be a nephew of Bei-Munithu) in the
leg, and soon stopped that game. George and the others were by
this time once more in the forest, so I retired from my place in the
open, and with my two men took up a fresh position at the entrance
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