308 THE MAN-EATERS OF TSAVO CHAP. 
forty yards off, moving in the same leisurely fashion 
as when I first saw him. An instant later, he 
noticed the general alarm caused by my appearance, 
and stopped and turned half round to see what was 
the matter. This gave me my opportunity, so I 
fired, aiming behind the shoulder. The way in 
which he jumped and kicked on feeling the lead told 
me | had hit him hard, and I got two more bullets 
into him from the magazine of my ‘303 before he 
managed to gain the shelter of a neighbouring 
thicket and was lost to sight. In the meantime the 
whole herd had thundered off at full gallop, disap- 
pearing ina few minutes in a cloud of dust. 
I was confident that there would be little difficulty 
in finding the wounded eland, and on Landaalu 
coming up—which, by the way, he did almost im- 
mediately, for he was a wonderful goer—we started 
to make a rough search through the thicket. Owing 
to the growing darkness, however, we met with no 
success, so I decided to return to camp, which was 
many miles away, and to resume the quest at 
daybreak the following morning. It turned out that 
we were even further from home than I| thought 
and black night came upon us before we had covered 
a quarter of the distance. Fortunately the invalu- 
able Landaalu had discovered a good crossing over 
the swamp, so we were able to press on at a 
good pace without losing any time in overcoming 
