3 o8 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 I 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 in a 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 



