LATER VISITS TO SOUTH AFRICA 139 
I broke a twig to attract his attention : his head swung half 
round, but was so guarded by the bush that it would have been 
useless to fire at it. His shoulder was more exposed. There 
was no time to wait, he was on the move, and the dust flew 
from his side as the heavy ball struck him. Screaming angrily, 
he turned full front in the direction of the tree by which I stood 
motionless. I do not think he made me out, and the bush 
was too thick for me to risk giving him further information by 
asecond shot. For a moment we confronted one another : 
and then, the rumbling note of alarm uttered by his companions 
decided him on joining them, and the stiff thorns bent before 
the weight of seven or eight bulls, as a cornfield in the wind. 
I regained the path and rode along the line of their retreat, 
which, as shown by the yielding bush, was parallel to it. 
_ After a time the thorns thinned out, and I caught sight of 
the wounded elephant holding a course of his own a little 
to the left of his fellows ; and when he entered the tropical 
_ forest beyond I was in his wake, and very soon compelled 
to follow where he broke a way. Lying flat on my pony’s neck 
and guiding him as I best might by occasional glimpses of the 
tail of my now slowly retreating pioneer, I laboured on in the 
hope that more open ground might enable me to get up along- 
side of him. A most unpleasant ride it was. My constrained 
_ position gave me but little chance of using my hands to save 
my head ; I was at one time nearly pulled from the saddle by 
the heavy boughs, and at another nearly torn to pieces by the 
wicked thorns of the ‘ wait-a-bit,’ which, although no longer 
the tree of the jungle, were intolerably scattered through it. I 
have killed elephants on very bad ground, ‘but this was the 
; 4 worst piece of bush I ever rode into in my life. A little extra 
- noise from the pursuers caused the pursued to stop ; and whilst 
clinging like Gilpin to the calender’s horse and peering at the 
broad stern of the chase, I saw him suddenly put his head 
where his tail ought to have been. The trunk was tightly 
coiled—an elephant nearly always coils his trunk in thick 
bush for fear of pricking it—forward flapped the huge ears, 
