Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/496918
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 4 0 raged toward the camp. They watched helplessly as scattered, wind-borne flames, which appeared to be dying, dropped onto small thorn trees and crackled back to life. TR and his native helpers struggled to move valuable equipment and goods to the other side of the camp away from the fire. All night the men watched as the flames danced around their camp. A s morning approached they could see their backfire, now almost 100 feet from camp, about to meet the wildfire as it crested a small hill. As they met, there was a huge, crackling roar, and then the fire died down and slowly burnedout. TR breathed a sigh of relief as the opposite edge of the fire cast an eerie glow over the savannah. As the smoke slowly drifted away, TR could once again hear the lions, their roars growing louder network of fire lanes around camp. They knew that if they couldn't hold back the fire, it would soon engulf the tents and they would lose everything. Other members of the safari were too far away to come to their rescue, and unknown to TR, Heller and Cunninghame were fighting their own battle. Apparently, the lions TR heard beyond the fire had been driven toward Heller and his skinners, trapping the men in their temporary camp. At the hunters' main camp, every available man was put to work digging and setting backfires on the other side of the fire lanes; others stood by with tree branches and wet gunny-sacks to beat out the flames should the backfires need controlling. As night approached, the fire swept into a vast stand of papyrus and the flames climbed 50 feet into the air. The men continued to work late into the night as the fire no-man's land of lawless elephant poachers. It remained like that for almost a year, until it was decided who should be in control. TR, however, had been granted special permission to hunt white rhino there, to complete the requirements of the National Museum in Washington, DC. Half of the President's safari was camped farther upriver where R. J. Cunninghame, the safari leader, along with zoologist Edmund Heller and their native helpers were working as fast as possible to prepare the skins of rhinos already collected. Back at the main camp, TR knew that he had to move fast if he was going to halt the fire. So Kermit, the president's son; Edgar A. Mearns, the safari's physician; zoologist J. Alden Loring; and Quinton O. Grogan, one of the last great elephant hunters who had recently joined the safari—all pitched in to help the natives dig a