28 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER CH. 



to a standstill. Snatching my heavy rifle from 

 Simba, I slipped a couple of cartridges into it, and, 

 rushing up to the unsteady old warrior, sent a 

 bullet through his heart. He toppled over with 

 a tremendous crash, and after a few gasps, lay 

 still. 



Another glorious day's sport over ! The thought 

 came to me with some faint touch of regret alas ! 

 life is brief, and its red-letter days so few and 

 far between ! Nor had we had too much time 

 to spare, for the sun now set in a magnificent flood 

 of colour, sending long ribbons and streamers of 

 ruddy fire into the deepening blue of the sky, and 

 tingeing the bush with a mystery and charm that I 

 have often wished I could adequately describe. 

 Dragging my weary limbs over to where Simba 

 stood, supporting himself against a convenient tree, 

 I gave his hand a hearty grip it was by no means 

 the first occasion on which we had faced a life 

 and death encounter together and being utterly 

 exhausted, flung myself on the ground. My tracker 

 followed suit and for a long while we lay, too 

 tired to think or speak or move. During the 

 tense excitement of the hunt, we had temporarily 

 forgotten our bodily discomforts, but now a swift 

 reaction set in, and we became the prey of a 

 burning, intolerable thirst ! No words can depict 

 the awful suffering that the simple want of water 



