With Flashlight and Rifle -^ 



who delivered the fatal shot and brought down the game. 

 It is a very different matter, and far more dignified, to go 

 on a hunting expedition unassisted. 



It frequently happens that a rhinoceros scents the 

 position of several ot the armed natives ; fire is opened 

 on him. and at the last moment the animal, already 

 mortally wounded, finds he is incapable of attacking any 

 of the marksmen, and so rushes snorting past them, to 

 be finished off sooner or later. Such situations give rise 

 to the fairy tales of those wonderful sidewise leaps — a 

 feat of which I could well imagine a toreador to be 

 •capable on the fiat sanded ground of th(i arena, even 

 when attacked by a rhinoceros, but which I shall never 

 .see performed by a European unless he has been 

 practised in bullfights. 



I have often heard of men being gored and tossed 

 into the air by these animals. The list of deaths under 

 :such circumstances is a long one, and quite a number of 

 Europeans in the districts traversed by me lost their 

 lives in this manner. 



A few years ago I met an English medical officer 

 who had been hastily called to a case of serious illness. 

 Shortly before our meeting one of his Askari, a Sutlanese, 

 had been gored and tossed by a rhinoceros (which had 

 been shot at l)y the whole of the littU" caravan). The 

 .animal's horn had penetrated deep into the unfortunate 

 man's abdomen. The wound was terrible, and the state 

 •of the patient seemed as hopeless to the doctor as it did 

 to a mere layman like myself As I intended to tnicani]) 

 for some time nc'ar by, the doctor earnestly entreated me 



2 12 



