AN ELEPHANT PLAYING WITH FIRE. 193 



drinking, by drawing the water into his trunk and then 

 pouring it into his mouth. I determined to break his 

 leg if possible ; so, covering the limb about level with 

 the lower line of his body, I lired, Carey firing for his 

 h(;art. I made a lucky shot ; and as the elephant turn- 

 ed and attempted to make away, his leg broke with a 

 loud crack, and he stood upon his three sound ones. 

 At once disabled and utterly incapable of escaping, 

 he stood statue-lilce beside the fountain, within a few 

 yards of where he had got the shot, and only occasion- 

 ally made an attempt at locomotion. 



The patch of my rifle fired at this elephant's comrade 

 had ignited a large ball of dry old dung, about eight 

 yards to leeward of our kraal, and, fanned by the breeze 

 it was now burning away very brightly, the sparks fly- 

 ing in the wind. Presently, on looking about me, I 

 beheld two bull elephants approaching by the self-same 

 foot-path which the others had held. The first of these 

 was a half-grown bull, the last was an out-and-out old 

 fellow with enormous tusks. They came on as the 

 first had done, but seemed inclined to pass to wind- 

 ward of us. The young bull, however, observed the 

 fire ; he at once walked up to it, and, smelling at it 

 with his trunk, seemed extremely amused, and in a 

 gamboling humor threw his trunk about, as if not 

 knowing what to think of it. The larger bull now 

 came up, and exposed a fine broadside : we took him 

 behind the shoulder and fired together : on receiving 

 the shots, he wheeled about and held west with droop- 

 ing ears, evidently mortally wounded. 



Some time after this I detected an enormous old bull 

 elephant approaching from the west. If we lay still 

 where we were, he must in a few minutes get our wind, 

 so we jumped up and ran forward out of his line of 



Vol. n— I 



