xxin SUPERSTITION AND A SEQUEL 217 



head at once coming straight towards me, and 

 a similar incident, incredible as it may seem, 

 has occurred to me more than once in my hunting 

 career. Shooting again, I cut the advancing fore- 

 part in halves, this time about eighteen inches 

 from the head, and still the reptile strove to 

 wriggle towards us, until one of my men, running 

 up, finished matters by smashing its head to a 

 pulp with a stick. It has always seemed an 

 amazing fact to me that the shattering action of a 

 bullet does not, in severing a snake in two, 

 utterly paralyse the section containing the head. 



However, to resume my story, only a few minutes 

 after this rencontre with the jokomahamba, we came 

 across the fresh manure of the two elephants that 

 we had persuaded ourselves were miles away, and 

 starting off at once in pursuit, managed without 

 undue difficulty to bag both of them, Simba stoutly 

 averring that we had been lucky on our hunt simply 

 because we had met with the snake. 



Sometimes, a dying elephant will take hold of a 

 tree with his trunk to prevent himself falling, and 

 when this occurs the inference drawn by the natives 

 who are hunting is that the wife of the man who 

 fired the first shot is undoubtedly proving faithless 

 to him. If an elephant or buffalo charges a native 

 after he has fired and wounded it, the same deduc- 

 tion is drawn, but should he be charged by the 



