ELEPHANT FRIENDS AND FOES — 39 
late. I didn’t see him when he got our wind but I 
knew perfectly he had it for there was the sudden 
crash of his wheel in the bushes and a scream. An 
elephant’s scream is loud and shrill and piercing. And 
it is terrifying, too—at least to any one who knows 
elephants—for it means an angry animal and usually 
a charge. Then came a series of grunts and rum- 
blings. A second or two later he came in sight, his 
ears spread out twelve feet from tip to tip, his trunk 
up and jerking fiercely from side to side. There is no 
_ way of describing how big an elephant looks under | 
these conditions, or the speed at which he comes. 
At about thirty yards I shot, but he took it. He 
stopped, seemingly puzzled but unhurt. I shot the 
second barrel and looked for my other gun which was 
thirty feet behind me. The boy ran up with it and 
I emptied both barrels into the elephant’s head, and 
still he took it like a sand hill. In the meanwhile, 
Mrs. Akeley had been firing, too. And then he 
turned and went off again. I went back to Mrs. 
Akeley. Everything that I knew about elephant 
shooting had failed to apply in this case. I had 
stopped him with one shot. That was normal 
enough. But then I had put three carefully aimed 
shots into his head at short range, any one of which 
should have killed him. And he had taken them with 
only a slight flinch and then had gone off. I felt 
completely helpless. Turning to Mrs. Akeley, I said: 
“This elephant is pretty well shot up, and perhaps 
we had better wait for developments.” 
She said: ‘‘No, we started it; so let’s finish it.” 
