XVII QUABEET MISSING 357 



and after chopping out the tusks, retraced our steps 

 to camp, which we reached late in the afternoon. 

 Quabeet was not there ; the sun set, and night again 

 shrouded the surrounding forest in darkness, and he 

 was still absent. I now felt sure that some accident 

 had happened to him, and only guessed too truly 

 that the awful and long-continued screaming I had 

 heard whilst I was engaged with my third elephant 

 had been his death-knell. The boys, too, cross- 

 questioned the Kafir who had been with Quabeet, and 

 convicted him of lying. I now determined that on 

 the morrow I would take the spoor of the tuskless 

 bull, for to him I could not help attributing the 

 catastrophe which I felt sure had happened, and as he 

 had turned out by himself when I fired the first shot, 

 I knew I should have no difficulty in doing so. 



" At break of day I left camp, and riding straight 

 to where I had shot the first elephant, took up the 

 spoor of the tuskless bull, and had followed it for 

 maybe two miles when I came to a place where he 

 had stood under a tree amongst some dense under- 

 wood. From this place he had spun suddenly round, 

 as the spoor showed, and made a rush through the 

 bush, breaking and smashing everything before him. 

 Fifty yards farther on we found Quabeet's gun, a 

 little beyond this a few odds and ends of skin that 

 he had worn round his waist, and then what remained 

 of the poor fellow himself. He had been torn in 

 three pieces ; the chest, with head and arms attached, 

 which had been wrenched from the trunk just below 

 the breast-bone, lying in one place, one leg and thigh 

 that had been torn off at the pelvis in another, and 

 the remainder in a third. The right arm had been 

 broken in two places and the hand crushed ; one of 

 the thighs was also broken, but otherwise the frag- 



