ELEPHANT HUNTING. 137 



trumpeting. He repeated it at intervals, as if to guide us, and we 

 made the most of it. Soon we were near enough to hear the wel- 

 come " crack ! crack ! crr-rr-ra67i / " of the young bamboo shoots 

 upon which the herd was evidently feeding. No sound can be 

 more welcome to the ears of the elephant hunter. There was not 

 a breath of air stirring to betray us, and a moment later we were 

 cx'ouching behind a huge teak-tree, in sight of half a dozen tall, 

 arching, gray backs that loomed up above the bushes. 



I now told four of the men to stay were they were, while Arndee 

 and I jjushed carefully forward. The weajDon upon which I de- 

 pended was a Westley Richards double muzzle-loading, smooth- 

 bore No. 8 gun, weighing 9| lbs., belonging to my fi-iend Theobald. 

 Each barrel was loaded with six drachms of powder and a No. 10 

 round baU of pure zinc. Arndee carried my No. 10 gun loaded 

 with hardened balls, and I rather flattered myself I could floor 

 an elephant with that old gun if need be. At first my tracker led 

 the way, and almost before we knew it we were in the midst of the 

 scattered herd. 



The herd contained about sixteen elephants, three of which 

 were young tuskers, but there was one old patriarch who earned a 

 splendid pair of ivories, and I instantly marked him as my own. 

 Being wholly unused to such work, I was all impatience to make 

 the attack at once, for fear the game would discover us and make 

 off. But Arndee had seen a good many elephants killed, and he 

 forcibly prevented my bringing matters to a crisis at once, telling 

 me by signs and looks to '• keep cool and take my time." I obeyed 

 him, and for fully half an hour we skulked around and through that 

 herd, trying to get a sure thing on that old tusker. 



The forest was quite oj)en, with only a little underbrush here 

 and there, and we could easily see an elephant a hundred yards 

 away. Often we were within thirty yards of an elephant, and sev- 

 eral times we crouched down in plain \dew of two or three. I was 

 amazed at their neither seeing nor scenting us. They were feeding 

 quietly on a hill-side, wandering all about, utterly unsuspicious of 

 danger. 



Now stand here with me and watch that lordly old tusker who 

 is coming this way. See how lazily and leisurely he saunters along, 

 swinging his huge trunk from side to side, until he comes to a thick 

 clump of bamboos. He sui-veys the clump for a moment with his 

 queer little brown eye, and sees in the very centre of it a soft and 

 juicy young shoot, which looks very much like a huge stalk of aspar- 



