2io ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER CH. 



peacefully sleeping, a party of Arab slavers and 

 their miscreant followers, the ruka-ruka, swooped 

 down upon the huts, butchered the old men and 

 women in cold blood, and captured the young men, 

 women and children for slaves. Wakened by the 

 noise of the burning thatch and the agonized cries 

 of the wounded and dying outside, the headman 

 had risen from his kitanda (bed) and rushed out of 

 the blazing hut. His wife, carrying their only child, 

 had just dashed out before him, and ere he could 

 overtake them, he saw in the light from the 

 conflagration a ruka-ruka run up and despatch the 

 woman and babe with a scimitar before his very 

 eyes. Springing upon the fiend, he killed him with 

 a blow from his knife, and fled into the comparative 

 safety of the forest. 



From that evil day, he had never returned to the 

 haunts of men, but had ever since dwelt in the 

 pori, living on locusts and fruit and wild honey, 

 supplemented with the birds and small game that he 

 had managed to trap. Constant brooding on the 

 awful disaster that had befallen him and his people 

 had at length driven him mad. Often, the people of 

 the neighbouring villages had caught and brought 

 him into their kraals and treated him kindly, but he 

 had never stayed long with them, usually seizing the 

 first opportunity to escape. 



I made my men cut the ropes with which they 



