TACKLING A TUSKER. 55 



At about three o'clock we stopped and ate our 

 frugal lunch. After half-an-hour's rest, we took 

 up the tracks again, which, as we progressed, got 

 fresher arid fresher, though they still led on and 

 on. At last we reached a belt of thin bamboos. 

 Eamiah was leading about a couple of yards in 

 front of me, and we were moving along noise- 

 lessly, carefully avoiding treading on any dead 

 twigs, leaves, etc. As we reached the edge of 

 the cover, he squatted suddenly, with his open 

 hand turned back, and extended towards me in a 

 warning gesture. Taking the hint, I crouched 

 also, and, edging gradually towards him inch by 

 inch, as he sat motionless, with his eyeballs nearly 

 protruding out of his head, I cautiously peered 

 through the leafy screen, and there, at last, not 

 fifty yards from me, the object of our search met 

 my delighted gaze ! A magnificent tusker truly ! 

 His long tusks : not the ivory-white my excited 

 imagination had depicted them, but a noble pair, 

 and plainly discernible, nevertheless. Nor was 

 his hide the blueish-grey colour seen on a well- 

 groomed elephant in captivity, but a dull, reddish, 

 almost brick-dust colour, the result, as I after- 

 wards discovered, of a thick coating of reddish 

 mud, something the colour of Devonshire soil 

 with which he had plastered himself, to protect 

 even his enormously thick hide from the insidious 



