56 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



pursued hotly by a vicious and wounded elephant, 

 he was caught and thrown down. " Kneeling over 

 me," he says, " she made three distinct lunges at me, 

 sending her left tusk through the biceps of my right 

 arm and stabbing me between the right ribs, at the 

 same time pounding my chest with her head (or 

 rather, I suppose, the thick part of her trunk between 

 the tusks) and crushing in my ribs on the same side. 

 . . . What hurt me was the grinding my chest 

 underwent. Whether she supposed she had killed 

 me, or whether it was that she disliked the smell of 

 my blood or bethought her of her calf, I cannot tell ; 

 but she then left me and went away." l After this 

 extraordinary escape Mr. Neumann was, needless to 

 say, laid up for many weeks, and had to endure a 

 long and tedious period of convalescence by the 

 shores of Lake Rudolf. 



Few, however, are the men who once overtaken 

 by a wild elephant escape with their lives. Usually 

 they are pierced through and through by the 

 monster's tusks and crushed with its forelegs to a 

 shapeless human pulp. A native hunter, in the 

 earlier days of Mr. Selous' career, was literally torn 

 into three pieces by one of these infuriated pachy- 

 derms. The chest, with the head and arms attached, 

 had been wrenched from the trunk just below the 

 breast bone ; one leg and thigh had been torn from 

 the pelvis ; the remainder of the body composed the 

 third fragment. This ghastly work had been done 



1 EUphjnt Hunting in East Equatorial Africa, p. 324, A. H. Neumann. 

 Rowland Ward and Co. 



