The Ghost and the Darkness

INTRODUCTION

The Ghost and the Darkness is currently showing on Netflix South Africa. The last time I watched it was over a decade ago. So, I decided to read most of Colonel John Patterson's The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and compare it to the movie. Technically, he was Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, D.S.O. However, not being one for typical or encyclopedia-like blog posts, I've simply gone with 'Patterson' throughout.

CHAPTER

In Chapter 1, Patterson arrives in Mombasa in March 1898, and loves the sight of its trees – coconut, mango, baobab. He praises the sailors of Arabian dhows, who can usually get around without compasses and sextants, and recalls a time he gave water to a dhow's crew on the Indian Ocean. He knows his history, and gives some offhand knowledge about Vasco da Gama.

Bahareen sailors row him to shore in a boat, and then he gets to Kilindini in a gharri, a trolley with seats that runs on a track. Here, he goes sightseeing and buys some clothes, and thinks of the many different races and nationalities that have lived in or come to Mombasa over the centuries – Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabs. He thinks of interesting things – old coins and idols; and a bad thing – how the Portuguese and Arabs fought each other over the years.

So, he gladly states that part of East Africa is now a British protectorate. And, as such, Mombasa is presently at peace and full of thriving shops. Kilindini itself has a fine and full harbour.

A week later, Patterson receives an official letter from the Foreign Office telling him to proceed to Tsavo, and he takes an early-morning train with Mr. Anderson, the superintendent of works, and Dr. McCulloch, the chief medical officer. The train crosses a bridge over the Strait of Macupa, passes through miles of trees, the Taru Desert, and an animal-filled stretch of land in which the Wa Nyika tribe live. An ostrich runs next to the train, which then passes through N'dii, a region of woods and mountains; land of the Wa Taita people.

Patterson reaches Tsavo at dusk and sleeps soundly on his camp bed in a deserted palm hut through which he can see the stars. The next morning, he climbs a hill to look around: jungle, thick undergrowth, thorn trees, bare dwarf trees, green trees, rocks, and rugged ridges. And, he can see Mount Kilima N'jaro in the distance.

[While Patterson's use of the word 'bahareen' became incorrect and outdated as the years went by, and he can be forgiven for using spaces in the terms 'Wa Nyika' and 'Wa Taita' having never been to East Africa before, his use of Kilima N'jaro as two separate words is entirely accurate.]

Patterson now thinks of the job at hand – he is to erect a permanent bridge across the Tsavo River, and to continue work for thirty miles on each side of it. He knows nothing yet about two strange lions.

BOOK

Chapter 1 is interesting: a suitable introduction to East Africa, including a good segue from Mombasa to Tsavo. The lion-centred chapters (2 through 9, and 14) are flowing, apart from a few unnecessary adverbs and adjectives – the style of the day – and can be knocked off on a lazy Sunday afternoon. My only complaint about Patterson's writing style is that some of his paragraphs are far too long. He or the editor could have broken them into shorter paragraphs.

For the sake of thoroughness, I read two further chapters, twice, and filled in the blanks by listening to the remaining chapters on Full Length Audiobooks on YouTube. The text-to-speech reading is imperfect, but the upload does have the advantage of displaying the text while the audio plays.

Also worth a mention is 'Tsavo Man-Eaters by John Henry Patterson: A Visual Adventure Audiobook' from Selva Lore Studio. The lion-centred chapters with lovely pictures.

PATTERSON

In the first few chapters of the book, Colonel Patterson comes across as mostly amiable. He talks to his Indian labourers in both English and fluent Hindustani. He is also happy to learn Swahili. He is not afraid to get both his clothes and hands dirty. He helps establish a water supply to his rock drillers. He also deals confidently and alertly with a group of aspiring murderers who feigned being stone masons, before having them arrested.

Patterson laughs when Heera Singh, head stone mason, jumps into the river to avoid a rolling trolley just as a photograph is being taken. He laughs at himself when a raft he co-built sinks. He also becomes good friends with Dr. Brock, the doctor in charge of the district.

Disappointingly, though, Patterson was a hunter. While he sometimes hunted for food for himself and others, or for scientific observation, he often hunted 'for fun'. In India, he killed tigers. In Tsavo, and in later years, Nyika, he killed scores of wild animals. In Chapter 14 of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, in just one day, he tried to kill a hippo, rhino, and leopard. He then shot dead a zebra, an animal he'd never even seen before.

I found some of Patterson's wording unsettling. His thirst to kill was unquenchable. The Patterson of the first half of the book is far different to the one of the second half.

Years ago, I watched a YouTube video in which a hippo in a waterhole got shot dead by Belgian poachers. It was a disturbing sight I will never forget as long as I live. The hippo went from happily swimming with other hippos to rolling around in agony, pain, and distress until it died. Its psychotic killers were all smiles.

LIONS

This then leaves you to wonder if Patterson had to kill those two particular lions, and I can only conclude that this was the case. No dart rifles or nature-reserve helicopters around in those days.

Almost nightly, Patterson heard labourers weeping or crying out. Sometimes, these labourers could hear their friends getting eaten. Patterson did everything he could to protect everyone. Crawled through thorns and scrub. Spent nights in trees. Made a trap out of an old goods wagon. Hid in or near other traps, or bait. Patrolled the jungle. And then still had to work the next day. One night, he even let some terrified labourers sleep in and around his tent.

The lions killed twenty-eight Indian labourers. Black labourers and artisans too. Patterson also found human bones in the lions' den, a deep cave. Copper bangles suggested that some of these victims had been locals. Not to mention locals whose bones were not in the cave. And 'absconded' labourers.

Roshan mistari (Roshan the mason), who worked for Patterson, placed the figure in the hundreds, in a grateful, albeit understandably gushing, poem presented to the engineer after the demise of the second lion.

In short, the figure can feasibly be placed in the dozens.

QUESTIONABLE SCEPTICISM

There's nothing wrong with healthy scepticism. However, there is with misleading, convenient, or bandwagon scepticism.

Firstly, downplaying the number of deaths.

The number of killings is downplayed by internet comments and articles. We are told that Patterson exaggerated the number. Yet, Patterson tells the reader in Chapter 9 that he does not know the total for sure. Then, in Chapter 14, states only that the cave held a 'number of human bones'.

Around thirty years after the incidents at Tsavo, Patterson estimated the figure of 135 deaths in total. The obvious gist of comments and articles is that he lied. But, bearing in mind that thirty years had gone by and that there were no official records of Black people who had died, coupled with scientific findings that the lions killed around 72 people, I think that Patterson, having flashbacks and remembering, for instance, the bones of the cave, can be forgiven for rounding off, perhaps with slight embellishment, to 135 deaths.

Scores of labourers had been eyewitnesses to the attacks. Unless they were all lying too, along with the roll-call records that were taken each morning. Employees Mahina and Moota were with Patterson when he found the cave.

If one has to believe that the lions killed no more than around 30 people, you'd have to believe then that they only killed Indian men and left everyone else alone.

Add to this that hundreds of workers fled for their lives at one point, even willing to lay across tracks to stop trains, something that would not have happened if killings had been, say, less than ten people. The sheer number of killings and associated distress sent workers away in terror.

Further, the indifference connected to the downplaying, whether direct or indirect, is unsettling. As if 'they only killed a few people' makes things okay. So willing to try to make Patterson look like a liar, these forums and so forth devalue human life.

Look, I don't like the fact that he killed wild animals 'for fun' in his spare time, and if I lived back then, I'd likely have scorned even the sight of him. But, if he saved his labourers from two very determined lions then that's what he did.

Secondly, downplaying the strangeness and cleverness of the lions.

This falls into three categories.

Firstly, that there were supposedly no animals about; nothing for lions to eat.

"I came upon… a deposit of fine, soft sand, in which were the indistinct tracks of numberless animals." (Page 90.)

"The track led through fairly open glades where traces of bush-buck and water-buck were numerous." (Page 93.)

"The country abounds with [game]." (Page 132.)

In reference to a neighbouring area:

"[We] saw and heard a wonderful variety of game… [And] thousands of animal paths." (Page 86.)

Add to that scientific findings that both lions never stopped eating animals during their killing spree of people.

Secondly, that an infected or abscessed tooth caused the lions to hunt people.

Patterson describes how he fired a shot at close range at one of the lions (last two pages of The Attack on the Goods-Wagon) and that the 'track of the bullet was left in the tooth stump'. (Google repeatedly credits this to the chapter The Death of the Second Man-Eater. However, while an accurate quote, it is more likely from later writings, perhaps a pamphlet, or a lecture he gave at the Field Museum in 1924.)

Whatever the case, it is more logical to assume that the abscess or infection came about after the tooth was damaged by Patterson. Add to that the established fact that the region was full of wild animals at the time, and that the two lions continued to eat both people and animals during that distressing nine-month period. The view that some people take that a lion's bullet-damaged tooth won't wear away, it will stay sharp, makes no sense whatsoever.

Further, there's the view that the tooth wasn't struck by a bullet at all. What were the chances of Patterson not striking a tooth at such close proximity to the lion on the night of the incident at the goods wagon? What are the chances that the tooth would conveniently halve itself at a later (or earlier) date so that Patterson could attach the incident at the goods wagon to that tooth?

One would have to believe that Patterson claimed a missing bullet in the company of Brock in 1898 and then maintained the lie for his 1907 publication with a view to lying about it again in 1924. Crystal ball.

If the lions were both very strange and very clever, one doesn't have to believe in a supernatural element to things. But to say that they were like this because there were no animals in the region is dishonest.

Simply, lions are carnivores and have been eating both people and animals for thousands of years. They're lovely creatures, but they're also violent creatures, and terrible tragedies do occur.

One wonders about the motivation of people who downplay Patterson's determined protection of the workers or his railway achievement, which, incidentally, coincided with stopping Arab slavers in the area – the bridge crossed where slavers might have forced their captives to cross the river.

Further, in prior months, lions hung around the region looking for abandoned slaves to eat. While this conjures up disturbing imagery, it is far more plausible to say that a couple of these lions continued to check out the areas neighbouring the river post slave days than it is to blame a sore tooth, especially when the other lion had no sore teeth at all.

Then, category three: there were no cattle and so forth about for the lions to steal.

"The lion seized a couple of the [Permanent Way] Inspector's goats and devoured them there and then." (Page 59.)

Patterson references cows, sheep, donkeys, and goats throughout the book. These were still around and still breeding despite the rinderpest and tsetse fly problems the region had experienced in earlier years.

MOVIE

Much has been made of the character Remington over the years. Should he have been in the movie, and for that length of time?

When Samuel introduces Remington's backstory, the latter's characterisation is, at least to a degree, sketchy and implausible. In his first three scenes, I found him annoying, and didn't like that he drank a cow's blood. (Incidentally, the Masai did this every day!)

However, he grows on the viewer, and now having watched the movie three times over three different decades, I couldn't imagine it without Remington or Michael Douglas playing the role. Val Kilmer as Patterson holding up his son at Remington's advice.

Patterson's non-fiction account contains numerous men of different races and professions who come, intermittently, to his assistance. Such as Mr. Farquhar, superintendent of police, and his team of sepoys, who travel to Tsavo from the coast.

In all, at least two dozen people helping over time is a fair estimate. Perhaps far too many to appear as main or minor characters in a movie that runs for less than two hours. So, all screenwriter William Goldman did was replace them with just four sidekicks – Samuel, the missionary, the doctor, and Remington.

Throughout the first few chapters of the non-fiction account, a determined Patterson welcomes assistance from those who help him to try and get the lions. He also gives both instructions and suggestions to others. These aspects are put in the movie through the friendship between Patterson and Remington.

Putting Remington's military knowledge with the Masai's camouflage skills and reverence for grass was not a bad idea. The Masai appear in Patterson's book only after the lions are killed. So, bringing their appearance earlier in movie chronology is a liberty that makes sense. In the book, smaller nomadic tribes are the game hunters of the region. However, Patterson spends more time with the Masai, whose name would have been more familiar to international viewers.

In general, Goldman captures much of the non-fiction book without verbosity in dialogue or convolution in situation.

Personally, though, I don't know if I entirely agree with Dr. Brock having being changed into Dr. Hawthorne. Perhaps his surname was to continually remind the viewer of Tsavo's many thorns, a constant presence in the lives of Patterson and his workers. Perhaps it was a subconscious decision; Patterson's constant mention of Tsavo's thorns does make them stick in the mind. Characterisation, of course, comes into it too.

If the book ever gets adapted again, maybe the screenwriter will have Brock more like he was in real life – a pivotal friend. And if it ever becomes a limited series, on Netflix, for instance, maybe some of those additional characters could make an appearance along with their tasks and aims.

Apparently, Goldman felt he had written a script inferior to his other movies. And director Stanley Hopkins felt he too had done an average job. Personally, I can point out specific flaws, such as the shot of Samuel in the mist; you can see it's not Val Kilmer silhouetted in the background. But, while not brilliant, it's a good movie. I much prefer it to some of Goldman's other adaptations. The General's Daughter is two hours of my life I'll never get back.

VAL KILMER

Top Secret is also presently showing on Netflix South Africa. I told my wife that my friends and I had giggled at it when we were small, and she said she'd never seen it before. So I put it on, and she killed herself laughing at the part where Nick Rivers puts his head in the oven and then lays across the on-stage train tracks.

With Val Kilmer's sad passing not too long ago, I think of how, at a very young age, I explained the storyline of Real Genius to a now late aunt. I think too of Willow and his other movies. And how he gave us a Colonel Patterson better than the one in real life.