AN AFRICAN ELEPHANT-HUNT 



me, swinging its trunk between a much larger pair of tusks than 

 those carried by the fallen elephant. It was exasperating to be 

 obliged to allow this excellent chance of downing the largest 

 tusker of the herd to pass owing to a defective rifle. 



In thinking the matter over at a later and calmer time, I 

 have been unable to determine whether these elephants were 

 actually charging in the direction of the report of the rifle or 

 simply stampeding back over their tracks. In either case my 

 escape from being trampled was very narrow. I managed to 

 find my frightened gun-bearer, and to break open the breech 

 of the heavy rifle against a palm-trunk and approached the 

 fallen elephant, which was unable to rise on account of a shat- 

 tered shoulder, and trumpeted continuously, levelling the grass 

 for yards around in its struggles. As two soft-nosed bullets 

 from the heavy rifle followed by a stream of five steel ones 

 from the 9mm. Mauser into the region of the heart and lungs 

 seemed to have no immediate effect, except to cause the wound- 

 ed beast to struggle more violently, I approached the elephant 

 from the other side and stiffened it out immediately with a shot 

 between the eyes from the smaller rifle. 



Darkness was now falling, and all night the five blacks and 

 myself crouched and shivered around a minute blaze of twigs 

 and sticks for imaginary warmth, while the heavy African dew 

 drenched us to the skin. Dawn came at last, and I was forced 

 to wait until eleven o'clock for the chief to return from the 

 nearest village with a force of natives to cut out the tusks, 

 which weighed sixty-two pounds, and each measured fifteen 

 and a half inches in circumference at the base and sixty-six 

 and a half inches in length. The ears of the African elephant 

 are the most conspicuous and striking part of the animal, being 

 of enormous size and continuously in motion. I measured the 

 ears of this bull with a ramrod, which I afterward measured 

 by tape in camp, and found each ear to be little less than five 

 feet in either direction. They were much torn and scarred by 



14.3 



