3 i2 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER CH. 



lying down. Ringler's men warned him that the 

 animal might only be sleeping, and advised him to 

 eliminate all possibility of a mishap by putting a 

 bullet into the beast, but the hunter, confident that 

 the animal was dead and the identical one that he 

 had wounded on the previous day, went up to the 

 recumbent monster and, encircling one of the tusks 

 with his fingers, exclaimed : ' What glorious ivory ! ' 

 Like a flash, the elephant, who was only dozing, 

 caught him with his trunk and smashing him with 

 his tusk, killed him on the spot. 



Ill 



Somewhere, deep in the forest, between Lake 

 Nyassa and the sea, probably in the vicinity of the 

 Locheringo River, there lies buried an Englishman 

 of the name of Watkinson. Exactly where, no 

 white man knows. Possibly some natives do, but 

 there are some things which black men do not tell, 

 and this is one of them. 



In 1903, Watkinson, accompanied by ten carriers, 

 two boys and a gun-bearer, left the lake with the 

 intention of following the Rovuma River down to 

 the sea, shooting as he went, and hoping to reach 

 the coast with a goodly stock of ivory. The boys 

 and gun-bearer had been in his service for years ; 

 the carriers were only raw natives engaged for the 



