AN ELEPHANT 235 



bore; on getting no response, I turned my head 

 and found I was quite alone. Then, with a hasty 

 fervent wish that Providence might guide the soft- 

 nose bullets, I shot twice rapidly into the bulging, 

 snapping bushes— the first and only time in my 

 hunting career that I ever pulled trigger without 

 seeing my mark. With the reports of my rifle 

 there came such a smashing of things as made that 

 of the night performance sound like the faintest 

 echo. The entire jungle appeared to be toppling 

 on me; on apparently all sides were the swaying 

 and crashing of bushes and the squashing of the 

 great feet as they rushed along through the muck. 

 As I crouched with my feet mired it was no com- 

 forting thought that should the elephants come 

 my way my chances of being trampled into the 

 mud were most excellent. But they went on with- 

 out my getting a view of them, and when they had 

 passed I extricated myself from the mud to find 

 the jungle round me literally plowed up, and in 

 one place a little splotch of blood to show that at 

 least luck had favored me in the direction of my 

 shot. 



Returning on my back tracks, I found my 

 party several hundred yards from the scene of 

 action, each beside a tree. Of course expostulation 

 was useless. I could not talk to them in their own 

 tongue, and they did not understand mine. Ma- 



