CHAPTER XIII 



ELEPHANTS 



Passing over tedious days spent fighting with fever 

 at Nakuru — days while tropical thunderstorms raged 

 every afternoon and i was held up a prisoner in my tent 

 — an incident occurred that altered all our plans. 

 There arrived direct news of elephants — news on which 

 we could rely ; the elephants, moreover, were close at 

 hand. Within five-and-twenty miles a big herd had 

 been seen on the Molo River to the westward, and were 

 reported to be moving across us towards the north- 

 east. 



Now throughout that season of 1905-6 herds of 

 elephants had been rambling here and there within our 

 British territories, and their presence at various points 

 had already been reported to us. Hitherto, however, all 

 such reports had been more or less indefinite, and in 

 every case the distance considerable. Elephants, we 

 knew, move fifty miles in a night — our own extreme 

 mobility being twenty ; hence all seductions had hither- 

 to been dechned. But here the case was wholly altered. 

 If the herd now reported — said to number forty — held 

 the line of march stated, we lay almost on their flank, 

 and, by a smart move, might cut them out. 



It was a clear chance — the chance, maybe, of a lifetime 

 — and we seized it. Though personally ill and weak, we 

 were into the saddle and away by daybreak. Our plan 

 of campaign was to march direct on Lake Solai, a marshy 

 vlei lying some twenty-five miles to the north-east among 

 the outliers of the Laikipia Range, and which was known 

 to be an occasional resort of elephants — in the hope either 



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