COMING ON A HERD AND THE RESULT. 1 53 



we had tiffed we took up the track. It was not long before 

 we got up to the herd feeding in some open forest ; I 

 pointed out the tusker to Michael, whose turn it was, and 

 who went down to him, I keeping more to the left where 

 there were two or three females ; on seeing him raise his 

 rifle I cocked mine, when bang it went off. I had got 

 into the bad habit of cocking my rifle without noise by 

 drawing the trigger back as I pulled up the hammer — a most 

 dangerous plan. I was most awfully disgusted at the con- 

 tretemps and fully expected that Michael would lose the 

 tusker by it. I ran back to get another rifle and returned 

 just in time to see an old female blundering over a prostrate 

 companion. They had given me the Laing rifle and I 

 bowled her over with a shot behind the ear, she falling on 

 the top of the dead one. The row was now something 

 awful, and to my astonishment I found in this short time 

 Michael had dropped the tusker and a brace of females. The 

 row was caused by two little elephant calves; one had got its 

 tail jammed between the two dead females, which made him 

 sing out most lustily, and the other joined in the chorus ; 

 added to this, were the groans and grunts of one of the 

 fallen elephants and the roaring of another tusker a short 

 distance off, which Michael ran up to and shot. We then 

 ran some distance after another tusker till we were both 

 quite out of breath, and when we stopped, found ourselves 

 near one of the calves. The little beast was roaring like half 

 a dozen tigers — such a queer little brute about the size of a 

 wild boar, and looking like an elephant dwarf at least two 

 hundred years old. We laid ourselves out to catch him, and 

 now commenced as laughable a scene as ever occurred. The 

 little brute was the most perfect caricature of an enraged 



