THE COLONEL KILLS THREE ELEPHANTS 153 



hunter and has killed numbers of lions and ele- 

 phants, but now he says he is through with danger- 

 ous game. 



"I've had enough of it," he says. 



The colonel, Tarlton, Heller, and Kermit were 

 the only members of the expedition present, 

 Mearns and Loring having been engaged in a sep- 

 arate mission up in the Kenia country for several 

 weeks, while Cuninghame had gone to Uganda to 

 make preparations for the future operations of the 

 party in that country. 



Mrs. Akeley washed up in the colonel's tent, 

 while Stephenson and I used Kermit's tent, and 

 as we washed and scrubbed away the memories of 

 the elephant carcasses the colonel stood in the door 

 and talked to us. 



We told him that each of us had taken a drink 

 of Scotch whisky the evening before in honor of 

 the elephants the first drinks we had taken for 

 weeks. 



"I'd do the same," said the colonel, "but I don't 

 like Scotch whisky. As a matter of fact, I have 

 taken only three drinks of brandy since I've been 

 in Africa, twice when I was exhausted and once 

 when I was feeling a little feverish. Before I left 

 Washington there were lots of people saying that I 

 was a drunkard, and that I could never do any 

 work until I had emptied a bottle or two of liquor." 



We told him that we had heard these rumors fre- 

 quently during the closing months of his admin- 

 istration, and he laughed. 



