ELEPHANT HUNTING. 139 



success, of course, and returned home in disappointment, wonder- 

 ing why my shot had failed to hit the brain. I see now, that on 

 account of my kneehng as I did, my bullet passed quite above the 

 mark. Had I aimed ten inches lower, it would have done its work. 



The next morning at daybreak we set out fully equipped for 

 cutting up an elephant, and took up the trail where we abandoned 

 it the evening before. 



"While following it up, we started quantities of game, but dared 

 not fire, not knowing how soon we might come up with the ele- 

 phants. We saw troop after troop of black monkeys, seventeen 

 gangs in all that day, and a number of great horn-bills {Buceros 

 bicornis) flying overhead. Out of a patch of low underbrush we 

 started a sounder of wild hog ; and farther on, a sohtary old bull 

 bison feeding upon a hill-side, saw us, gave a snort like a steam- 

 engine, and dashed heavily away. Later in the day we came upon 

 a herd of axis deer feeding at the edge of a glade, and I could not 

 resist the temptation to fire at a buck. I crept up to within sixty 

 yards of him, rested my rifle upon a log, fii-ed at him as he stood 

 broadside — and never touched him ! He did not even jump. 

 Before I could recover from my astonishment and reload my rifle 

 the herd quietly trotted off. Veiily 



"All hits are history, 

 All misses mystery," 



but this new humiliation was very discouraging. 



We followed the elephant trail until it crossed the Teckadee 

 River and entered the Government Leased Forest, where we had 

 no right to follow it, and then went home in disgust. On the way 

 home we saw a sambur, but could not get a shot at it, and thus 

 ended a day of disappointments. 



For the next four days I had fever. My cook and interpreter, 

 IVIichael, also came down with it, and declared that unless sent 

 home at once he would die. I doctored both him and myself with 

 quinine so successfully that in a few days the fever was broken, and 

 we were once more able to work. Every day it rained from two to 

 four hours, and the forest was very dark and damp. 



Eight days after the above fiasco, I had another experience of 

 rather a different nature, and was considerably scared by an old 

 cow elephant who took it into her head to run me down. The mo- 

 ment of danger in hunting a dangerous animal is when it " charges " 

 the hunter, as the saying is, at which time nothing but the hunter's 



