THE PRESERVATION OF GAME. 22 1 



again a miss-fire takes place. He shouts for his second rifle, but gets no response. 

 He rushes towards the spot at which he last saw his native followers disappear, 

 and shouts again. He looks behind him and sees the great beast slowly pick 

 itself up and walk off with slow and stately steps. Then, after what appears an 

 infinite delay, one native appears and sets out in search of the trusty bearer of the 

 big bore. At last the rifle is produced, and the hunter, grasping it, sets off down the 

 tracks at his best pace, but unhappily the sun has set, and soon he is reluctantly 

 forced to turn back, and starts a three-hour stumble in the dark back to camp, 

 cursing himself and the natives and the rifle and the gunmaker, thereby gaining 

 some relief. 



An inspection of the rifle shows that a heavy fall of rain just after he left camp 

 in the early morning was the cause of the disaster, drops of rain having rolled down 

 the bore and entered the interior of the bolt around the striker, thus rusting the pin 

 and hindering it in its forward action. 



The three-hour stumble in the dark develops into four hours before he arrives 

 back in camp, exhausted and weary, only to make the delightful discovery that the 

 parties sent out to buy chickens have not been successful, and so dinner must consist 

 of mashed beans and native flour. 



Next morning he is about to move camp to the scene of his last night's 

 adventure, when a native rushes in to say that he has just seen two elephants 

 passing close by. In this case the native khabar turns out, by way of novelty, to be 

 wonderfully accurate. He has not actually seen two elephants, but he has seen the 

 fresh spoor of one which he has mistaken for that of two. The hunter loses no time 

 in getting on the trail, and soon recognises by the spoor that by some extraordinary 

 luck it is his last night's elephant he is after, which, having probably walked round 

 in semicirles during the whole night, has chosen this direction in which to trek off. 



The spoor leads our hunter for the whole day through long grass and through 

 thick bush ; only twice has the elephant stopped, and then but for a moment. At 

 last, in the afternoon, the spoor passes into very thick dense grass, the track left 

 being but a narrow lane between two immense walls of grass. 



Suddenly, as he approaches a tree, he starts, and his heart stops beating and 

 then throbs on with a great rush. For there, under the tree, just discernible between 

 the grass about fifteen yards away, is a great bulky form. A moment later he 

 recognises that it is but a termite-hill under the tree and, though his hopes sink, he 

 has still some crumbs of comfort left, for the hill will make a suitable place from 

 which to reconnoitre. He approaches it, and when he has proceeded another few 

 yards he stops again in sudden doubt. Surely it is not all ant-hill ? H. ihen sees 



