386 UGANDA [ch. xiii 



flotilla himself. Captain Hutchinson was a mighty 

 hunter, and had met with one most extraordinary 

 experience while elephant hunting ; in Uganda the 

 number of hunters who have been killed or injured by 

 elephants and buffaloes is large. He wounded a big 

 bull in the head, and followed it for three days. The 

 wound was serious, and on the fourth day he overtook 

 the elephant. It charged as soon as it saw him. He 

 hit it twice in the head with his "450 double barrel as it 

 came on, but neither stopped nor turned it ; his second 

 rifle, a double 8 bore, failed to act ; and the elephant 

 seized him in its trunk. It brandished him to and fro 

 in the air several times, and then planting him on the 

 ground, knelt and stabbed at him with its tusks. 

 Grasping one of its fore-legs he pulled himself between 

 them in time to avoid the blow ; and as it rose he 

 managed to seize a hind-leg and cling to it. But the 

 tusker reached round and plucked him ofl^ with its 

 trunk, and once more brandished him high in the air, 

 swinging him violently about. He fainted from pain 

 and dizziness. When he came to he was lying on the 

 ground ; one of his attendants had stabbed the elephant 

 with a spear, whereupon the animal had dropped the 

 white man, vainly tried to catch its new assailant, and 

 had then gone off for some tliree miles and died. 

 Hutchinson was frightfully bruised and strained, and it 

 was six months before he recovered. 



