Lake Victoria to Khartoum 



Food was now the order of the day under the 

 spreading branches of the tree, but we had barely 

 got the box open when another crashing, quite 

 close by, came from the direction of our line of 

 advance. Elephants, no doubt ! As the noise 

 grew louder and more close, we gripped our 

 rifles, determined to do or die. In a moment 

 they would move into our wind and we should 

 know the worst — whether they would bolt, or 

 whether they were out for blood and meant 

 charging. The worst happened, and they fled. 

 Would you believe it ! They were the same 

 animals we had disturbed a moment before. Two 

 men, who had gone in pursuit of their tracks, 

 came in and reported the fact. What must have 

 happened was this : the bushbuck had given 

 the whole show away. No animal in the jungle 

 ever disdains another's warning signal, and al- 

 though the elephants had neither seen nor heard 

 anything, they knew that they had better make 

 their absence felt — at any rate, for a time. After 

 going for a short distance, however, they had 

 probably collected their shattered nerves and 

 headed back to continue their siesta under their 

 favourite tree, and to investigate matters gen- 

 erally. Then they had got our wind. If only 

 we had stopped fifty yards behind, where the 

 grass was thinner, the elephants would have 

 walked straight into us. But no one in his 

 senses would have stopped out in the open to eat 



200 



