chap. v. A CHECK. 93 



the spare guns was the thoughtless character of the 

 advance. I felt sure that these fellows would outrun 

 the position of the elephants, which, if they had con- 

 tinued in a direct route, should have entered the jungle 

 within 300 yards of our first station. 



We had slipped, and plunged, and struggled over 

 this distance, when we suddenly were checked in our 

 advance. We had entered a small plot of deep mud 

 and rank grass, surrounded upon all sides by dense rat- 

 tan jungle. This stuff is one woven mass of hooked 

 thorns : long tendrils, armed in the same manner, al- 

 though not thicker than a whip-cord, wind themselves 

 round the parent canes and form a jungle which even 

 elephants dislike to enter. To man, these jungles are 

 perfectly impervious. 



Half-way to our knees in mud, we stood in this 

 small open space of about thirty feet by twenty. 

 Around us was an opaque screen of impenetrable 

 jungle ; the lake lay about fifty yards upon our left, 

 behind the thick rattan. The gun-bearers were gone 

 ahead somewhere, and were far in advance. We were 

 at a stand-still. Leaning upon my long rifle, I stood 

 within four feet of the wall of jungle which divided us 

 from the lake. I said to B., ' The trackers are all 

 wrong, and have gone too far. 1 am convinced that 

 the elephants must have entered somewhere near this 

 place.' 



Little did I think that at that very moment they 



