ELEPHANTS 



161 



paper. The sensatious aroused, though they may be 

 realised in imagination, cannot be printed so. Nor can 

 the degree of danger be defined, since the temperament 

 and conduct of elephants differ. No two need be alike. 

 These, for example, retired at the crucial moment ; but 

 in my own former experience on Lake Baringo (p. 68), 

 a " lone bull "' charged at once on scent alone, though 

 otherwise unmolested ; and instantly repeated the 

 charge a second time, after being wounded. Here 

 again, at Solai, only a few weeks before, a fatal accident 



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had occurred.^ Beyond all doubt we enjoyed unusual 

 good fortune in thus encountering our elephants, not 

 only in broad daylight, a steady breeze, and open 

 country, but also taken at disiidvantage in treacherous 

 bog. Still there was, following on Mabruki's insane shot 

 "into the brown," a period of supreme danger, when 

 for some seconds all our six lives hung in the balance. 

 Had the elephants then seen us — when almost under 



1 An Englishman, as related to iis, had found and stalked a 

 single bull elejjhant, unaware of the presence of six others among 

 bush on his flank, and to whose view he had thus unwittingly 

 exposed himself during the stalk. On his firing at the bull, one of 

 these six at once charged; and, the repeating mechanism of his rifle 

 jamming, the poor fellow was straightway caught and killed. 



