416 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



and presently the elephant disappeared in some low 

 jungle, and the herd began again to graze. They fed 

 down towards me, and when about seventy yards off I 

 fired at the leader, who was standing end on to me, and 

 was raked fore and aft by the heavy, hard ball, falling 

 prone, toes upwards, on the ground. Instead of retreat- 

 ing, the herd now gathered about their comrade, and 

 trotted round, snuffing the blood, and looking about for 

 their concealed enemy. The wreathing smoke of my 

 rifle betrayed our position, and it was not without some 

 alarm that I saw them draw up in a semicircle of 

 pawing hoofs and snorting nostrils, surmounted by forty 

 pairs of monstrous horns. My gun-bearer, Peer Khan, 

 and I thought discretion the better part of valour under 

 such circumstances, and espying, some way to our right, 

 the pollarded trunk of a saj tree, we retreated, snake 

 fashion, through the grass, and clambered up it. Getting 

 to the top, I sat on its smooth summit, while Peer Khan 

 roosted crow-like on a branch, the only one, a foot or 

 two lower down. I now opened fire on the herd, the 

 first shot from the large rifle almost knocking me off my 

 perch with the heavy recoil ; I believe Peer Khan, who 

 had reloaded it, had put in a double charge of powder. 

 I then fired two rounds from the fourteen-bore, the herd 

 pausing irresolute, and finally breaking into a panic- 

 stricken flight. The balls had knocked the dried mud 

 in clouds from their hides, and one remained standinsr 

 on the ground, while another lagged, very lame, behind 

 the retreating herd. I went up and finished the first, 

 and then tracked up the other a long way, till it went 

 with the herd into a heavy swamp, when I returned to 

 camp. I did not see, in the confusion, what became of 

 the nilgai ; but he was not with the herd when it 

 retreated. 



