68 AFRICAN ADVENTURE STORIES 



portionately peevish and a person can never 

 tell when this peevishness will suddenly be thrust 

 upon him. 



I must admit that a peculiar feeling always 

 passed over me whenever I heard a commotion 

 in the bamboos near by and the gun bearer fran- 

 tically seized the Ithaca shotgun from my hand 

 and replaced it with the cocked rifle. Every in- 

 stant I expected to see an elephant rush out, and 

 I wondered whether I had better shoot for the 

 heart through the chest, for the brain through 

 the head, or for camp through the bamboos, and 

 a feeling of relief came over me when I discov- 

 ered that time that my elephants were simply 

 a troop of startled monkeys hurrying away. 



When resting or sleeping, elephants stand 

 huddled together, but when they start out to 

 feed they scatter and the hunter can never tell 

 when or from what direction he will be charged 

 by an animal he has not seen. Colonel Roose- 

 velt had a narrow escape in this way when shoot- 

 ing one of his first elephants. 



He and Cuninghame were trailing the animal, 

 and when within shooting distance the colonel 

 fired and wounded it, but killed it with his sec- 

 ond barrel. Before he could reload, another ele- 



