JUNGLE MAN:

232 pages: illustrations, portraits (one as frontispiece), maps (1 on front endpaper). Cloth. Dust wrapper with chips to top and bottom of spine. Page edges slightly browned.

Pretorius (1876-1945) served as a chief scout for Smuts' forces in the East African campaign. Before the South African War, Pretorius traded north of the Limpopo and in 1899 ventured further north into modern Zambia and Tanzania, where he became a legendary elephant and lion hunter. Sir de Villiers Graaff recounts in his autobiography that when he was undergoing officer training in Pretoria during the early days of World War II, Pretorius was invited to address the candidate officers (who were almost all unaware of who he was). Sir Div had hunted with him some years before and thus knew the calibre of the man- he was amused to see the candidate officers’ dismay at the arrival of this elderly and obviously "passed it' speaker. Pretorius proceeded to captivate his audience whilst imparting his many experiences.

Wilbur Smith based his book SHOUT AT THE DEVIL on Pretorius' experiences in East Africa during World War I. The film of the same name, starring Roger Moore and with Lee Marvin as Pretorius, was one of the standout films of 1976.

During the East African campaign in WWI Pretorius was tasked with tracking down the German cruiser Konigsberg. Local tribesmen recalled him from some years previously when he had dealt with man-eating lions that had threatened their villages. They returned the favour, and with their help Pretorius managed to infiltrate to the bank of the river close to the Konigsberg. He fled as German troops pursued him, only being saved by darkness falling. His 'team' regrouped some days later, having used the crocodile-infested river to float away to safety. Pretorius used a dugout canoe to assess the depth of the Rufiji and once this was established, reported back to the Royal Navy, which duly summonsed shallow draft vessels from far-away Portsmouth which dealt with the Konigsberg. Pretorius records (p. 29) that this whole event with its complications, dangers and success in the intense heat of the Delta took up but three lines in the Royal Navy history! He writes movingly of when he finally came to view the results of the RN handiwork and looked on the fallen cruiser, a "twisted wreck of tortured steel, made the more unlovely by broken bodies strewn at every angle".

Pretorius, like F.C. Selous, met his fate as he had lived his life. In 1945 an elephant "rammed a tusk through Mr Pretorius' throat and then trampled him to death" in the Ubangi Shari area of the Belgian Congo, thus extracting revenge for the more than 400 of his fellow beasts Pretorius is reputed to have felled.