444 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



by Kermit, and by the other gun-bearers. The country was 

 covered with tall grass, and studded with numerous patches 

 of jungle and small forest. In a few minutes we heard 

 the elephants, four or five of them, feeding in thick jungle 

 where the vines that hung in tangled masses from the trees 

 and that draped the bushes made dark caves of greenery. 

 It was difficult to find any space clear enough to see thirty 

 yards ahead. Fortunately there was no wind whatever. We 

 picked out the spoor of a big bull and for an hour and a half 

 we followed it, Kongoni usually in the lead. Two or three 

 times, as we threaded our way among the bushes, as noise- 

 lessly as possible, we caught glimpses of gray, shadowy bulks, 

 but only for a second at a time, and never with sufficient dis- 

 tinctness to shoot. The elephants were feeding, tearing 

 down the branches of a rather large-leafed tree with bark 

 like that of a scrub-oak and big pods containing beans; 

 evidently these beans were a favorite food. They fed in 

 circles and zigzags, but toward camp, until they were not 

 much more than half a mile from it, and the noise made by 

 the porters in talking and gathering wood was plainly 

 audible; but the elephants paid no heed to it, being evi- 

 dently too much accustomed to the natives to have much 

 fear of man. We continually heard them breaking branches, 

 and making rumbling or squeaking sounds. They then 

 fed slowly along in the opposite direction, and got into 

 rather more open country; and we followed faster in the 

 big footprints of the bull we had selected. Suddenly in an 

 open glade Kongoni crouched and beckoned to me, and 

 through a bush I caught the loom of the tusker. But at 

 that instant he either heard us, saw us, or caught a whiff 

 of our wind, and without a moment's hesitation he him- 

 self assumed the offensive. With his huge ears cocked at 

 right angles to his head, and his trunk hanging down, he 

 charged full tilt at us, coming steadily, silently, and at a 

 great pace, his feet swishing through the long grass; and a 

 formidable monster he looked. At forty yards I fired the 

 right barrel of the Holland into his head, and though I 



