484 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



a large patch of thick bush which we knew of. At 

 last, still sticking to his spoor, we entered the bush, 

 and I telt sure that we should find him dead or alive 

 within that sombre thicket. A quarter of an hour 

 later we found a place from which he had only just 

 risen ; he had evidently heard us. I was peering 

 about in front of me when I suddenly saw him 

 standing, half-facing us, perfectly still and motionless ; 

 the next instant we both fired. For a short distance 

 he crashed through the dense scrub, and then pulled 

 up, when another bullet from my friend's rifle finished 

 him. 



He must have heard us approaching as we trod 

 upon the thickly-strewn leaves, and in such dense 

 bush had a splendid opportunity for a charge, yet he 

 never attempted it. Upon cutting him up we found 

 that only one of us had hit him on the preceding 

 evening, and that the bullet had raked one lung, 

 which accounted for the quantity of blood he had 

 thrown from his nostrils. This lung was quite 

 white-looking and empty of blood, except that portion 

 discoloured by the bullet wound. 



Upon returning to camp we found some natives 

 who had come to cut up the elephant left in the 

 thick bush, and which, except that his tusks had been 

 chopped out, and his trunk cut off, had not been 

 disturbed by us. This carcase we had passed almost 

 daily during the last week, and on the preceding 

 evening the hyaenas must have torn it open for the 

 first time, as the stench was sickening, at a distance 

 of at least half a mile below the wind ; and now 

 these men were going to cut up and eat the putrid, 

 stinking meat, which had lain eight days and nights 

 festering beneath the fierce rays of a tropical sun ! 

 Truly some tribes of Kafirs and Bushmen are fouler 



