HUNTING & SHOOTING IN CEYLON 



five more shots before I found the brain and he collapsed. 

 My first shot, which took him through the curled-up trunk, 

 must just have touched the brain or the vertebral column, 

 as his hind quarters were apparently useless, which was lucky 

 for me, as he evidently meant business. He was a fine big 

 elephant, as big as the one I had shot in the morning, and 

 I returned to camp dead-beat, but more than pleased with 

 myself. 



On another occasion a villager came up to say that there 

 was a bad rogue near his village, which had taken to chasing 

 the villagers on the road to their clearing. This was also 

 in very dry weather ; in fact their clearing had only just 

 been burnt ofF. I went down to the village that evening, 

 and next morning started off for his haunts. Getting on 

 to his tracks, we followed through some awful stuff till 

 we got out on to a small open space consisting of a long 

 hog's back-shaped rock, with short grass, the open space 

 being about 50 yards long by about 20 broad. Leaving 

 the rifle with me, the tracker made a cast round to see 

 where the elephant had re-entered the scrub. Seeing him 

 beckon to me I crept up, and there was the elephant stand- 

 ing with his tail towards me about 6 yards in from the 

 edge of the jungle. The stuff was very thick and thorny, 

 and I was debating what I should do, as there seemed no 

 chance of getting a shot for the brain, when he settled 

 matters by spinning round and charging. I had only time 

 to give him one in the forehead, but it stopped him, and he 

 turned and went off grumbling and gurgling. I followed 

 as fast as I could, but the going was very difficult, and I 

 handed the rifle back to the tracker as the stuff took me 

 all my time to push my way through. We could hear the 

 elephant grumbling ahead of us, when suddenly all was 

 still, and I had just taken my rifle from the tracker when 



128 



