262 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



feet high. On this the elephant were feeding. Tarlton's 

 favorite sport was lion hunting, but he was also a first- 

 class elephant hunter, and he brought me up to these bulls 

 in fine style. Although only three hundred yards away, 

 it took us two hours to get close to them. Tarlton and the 

 "shenzis" wild natives, called in Swahili (a kind of Afri- 

 can chinook) "wa-shenzi" who were with us, climbed 

 tree after tree, first to place the elephants, and then to see 

 if they carried ivory heavy enough to warrant my shooting 

 them. At last Tarlton brought me to within fifty yards 

 of them. Two were feeding in bush which hid them from 

 view, and the third stood between, facing us. We could 

 only see the top of his head and back, and not his tusks, and 

 could not tell whether he was worth shooting. Much puz- 

 zled we stood where we were, peering anxiously at the huge 

 half-hidden game. Suddenly there was a slight eddy in 

 the wind, up went the elephant's trunk, twisting to and fro 

 in the air; evidently he could not catch a clear scent; but 

 in another moment we saw the three great dark forms 

 moving gently off through the bush. As rapidly as possi- 

 ble, following the trails already tramped by the elephants, 

 we walked forward, and after a hundred yards Tarlton 

 pointed to a big bull with good tusks standing motionless 

 behind some small trees seventy yards distant. As I aimed 

 at his head he started to move off; the first bullet from the 

 heavy Holland brought him to his knees, and as he rose I 

 knocked him flat with the second. He struggled to rise; 

 but, both firing, we kept him down; and I finished him 

 with a bullet in the brain from the little Springfield. Al- 

 though rather younger than either of the bulls I had already 

 shot, it was even larger. In its stomach were beans from 



