ELEPHANT FRIENDS AND FOES — 43 
seconds later there was a crash. ‘“‘He’s down,” 
I thought, and Bill, the gun boy, and I ran over 
to the place where the animals had been. We fol- 
lowed their tracks a little way and found where one 
of the elephants had been down, but he had re- 
covered and gone on. However, he had evidently 
gone off by himself when he got up, for while the 
others had gone down an old trail he had gone straight 
through the jungle, breaking a new way as he went. 
~ With Bill in the lead, we pushed along behind him. 
It was a curious trail, for it went straight ahead with- 
out deviation as if it had been laid by compass. One 
hour went by and then another. We had settled 
down for a long trek. The going wasn’t very good 
and the forest was so thick that we could not see in 
any direction. We were pushing along in this fashion 
when, with a crash and a squeal, an elephant burst 
across our path within fifteen feet of us. It was ab- 
solutely without warning, and had the charge been 
straight on us we could hardly have escaped. As it 
was, I fired two hurried shots as he disappeared in the 
growth on the opposite side of the trail. The old 
devil had grown tired of being hunted and had 
doubled back on his own trail to wait for us. He 
had been absolutely silent. We hadn’t heard a thing, 
and his plan failed, I think, only because the growth 
was so thick that he charged us on scent or sound 
without being able to see us. I heard him go through 
the forest a way and then stop. I followed until I 
found a place a little more open than the rest, and 
with this between me and the trees he was in I waited. 
