308 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



stalking they got within thirty yards of the bull, behind 

 whom was a line of cows. Kermit put both barrels of his 

 heavy double .450 into the tusker's head, but without even 

 staggering him; and as he walked off Tarlton also fired 

 both barrels into him, with no more effect; then, as he 

 slowly turned, Kermit killed him with a shot in the brain 

 from the .405 Winchester. Immediately the cows lifted 

 their ears, and began trumpeting and threatening; if they 

 had come on in a body at that distance, there was not 

 much chance of turning them or of escaping from them: 

 and after standing stock still for a minute or two, Kermit 

 and Tarlton stole quietly off for a hundred yards, and 

 waited until the anger of the cows cooled and they had 

 moved away, before going up to the dead bull. Then they 

 followed the herd again, and Kermit got some photos 

 which, as far as I know, are better than any that have 

 ever before been taken of wild elephant. He took them 

 close up, at imminent risk of a charge. 



The following day the two hunters rode back to Meru, 

 making a long circle. The elephants they saw were not 

 worth shooting, but they killed the finest rhinoceros we had 

 yet seen. They saw it in an open space of tall grass, sur- 

 rounded by lantana brush, a flowering shrub with close- 

 growing stems, perhaps twenty feet high and no thicker 

 than a man's thumb; it forms a favorite cover for elephants 

 and rhinoceros, and is wellnigh impenetrable to hunters. 

 Fortunately this particular rhino was outside it, and Ker- 

 mit and Tarlton got up to about twenty-five yards from 

 him. Kermit then put one bullet behind his shoulder, 

 and as he whipped round to charge, another bullet on the 

 point of his shoulder; although mortally wounded, he 

 showed no signs whatever of being hurt, and came at the 

 hunters with great speed and savage desire to do harm. 

 Then an extraordinary thing happened. Tarlton fired, 

 inflicting merely a flesh wound in one shoulder, and the 

 big, fearsome brute, which had utterly disregarded the two 

 fatal shots, on receiving this flesh wound, wheeled and ran. 



