44 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
I could hear him grumbling in there from time to 
time. I didn’t expect him to last much longer so I 
got my lunch and ate it while I listened and watched. 
I had just finished and had a puff or two on my pipe 
when he let out another squeal and charged. He 
evidently had moved around until he had wind of me. 
I didn’t see him but I heard him, and grabbing the 
gun I stood ready. But he didn’t come. Instead I 
heard the breaking of the bushes as he collapsed. 
His last effort had been too much for him. 
The efforts of the next elephant who tried the quiet 
waiting game on me were almost too much for me. 
We had just come down from the ice fields seven- 
teen thousand feet up on the summit of Mt. Kenia, 
overlord of the game regions of British East Africa, 
and had come out of the forest directly south of the 
pinnacle and within two or three miles of an old camp- 
ing ground in the temperate climate, five or six thou- 
sand feet above sea level, where we had camped five 
years before and again one year before. Instead 
of going on around toward the west to the base camp 
we decided to stop here and have the base camp 
brought up tous. Mrs. Akeley was tired, so she said 
she would stay at the camp and rest; and I decided 
to take advantage of the time it would take to bring 
up the base camp to go back into the bamboo and 
get some forest photographs. 
There was perfectly good elephant country around 
our camp but I wanted to go back up where the 
forests stop and the bamboo flourishes, because it 
was a bamboo setting that I had selected for the group 
