294 PRACTICAL JOKE. 



At this place two gentleman attempted to play on me 

 a very silly trick, that might have led to very serious 

 consequences, had it not been for the greatest caution 

 on the part of myself and another individual. 



A party of five had been dining together, when, at 

 about 10 P.M., a commissariat officer and I, who were two 

 of the five, left the others, and mounted our horses for 

 the purpose of riding round the edge of the Berea, on the 

 chance of finding an elephant outside it, as I had heard 

 several feeding in the bush as I returned from shooting 

 in the afternoon of this day. 



We were much ridiculed by two gentlemen of the party 

 on announcing our intended proceedings, for they seemed 

 to think no elephants were near, and that we were a couple 

 of blockheads for troubling ourselves to go out. Not re- 

 garding these remarks, we started, and having been 

 careful to select saddles that did not creak and curb- 

 chains that did not jingle, we advanced with tolerable 

 silence to the part of the forest from whence emanated 

 the sounds that had shown me in the afternoon the pre- 

 sence of a troop of elephants. We halted at about two 

 hundred yards from the tall trees that fringed this part, 

 and listened for any indications. Our patience was not 

 severely tried, as we heard one or two branches smashed 

 as none but an elephant could have smashed them. 

 We immediately took up our position a little nearer, and 

 behind some bushes, so that we might not be seen by any 

 elephants when they came to drink at the pools of water 

 near. We waited for nearly half an hour, plainly hearing 

 the troop feeding at about one hundred yards inside the 



