i8o ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap. 



usual cautious tactics in the excitement of our first success for 

 the trip, I foolishly talked exultingly to my men, who had 

 come up, and again alarmed the others, which had been 

 standing close b\- though hidden from us, and thus lost our 

 second splendid chance. Following, however, in their wake, 

 we got close up again to them, standing in the grass jungle. 

 One faced me, and as I tried to get into a position to shoot 

 from, it approached. I waited for it to halt or give me a 

 chance at its chest ; but, instead of stopping, it came on 

 quicker, while its chest was covered by the tall reedy grass, 

 and, when within five or six paces, I felt constrained to fire 

 in its face, and try to get out of sight among the stems of the 

 brake. Luckily the shot turned it. Blood showed on the 

 grass, but we did not follow it at once, going after others 

 instead. I felt it to be unpleasantly risky work in this tangle 

 of tall swamp grass. Impenetrable out of the elephant tracks, 

 and often difficultly so even in them, it was high enough to 

 conceal an elephant entirely unless very very close, and 

 seldom allowed more than the head to be seen even then. 

 Fortunately the wind, which kept pretty steadily in one 

 quarter, came in stiff gusts now and then, drowning the noise 

 one made in forcing one's way through the rustling grass, 

 which also, by its waving about, helped to obscure one's move- 

 ments. Taking advantage of one of these gusts, I crept in 

 near, once more, to a clump of elephants, and succeeded in 

 knocking over a couple more, like ninepins, with the head 

 shot.^ 



As the elephants seemed now to have moved back up 

 the valley, that is down wind, we struck across for the foot 

 of the hills on the west side, so as to get round to leeward 



1 I am afraid this abrupt way of putting it sounds rather like bragging. But these 

 sentences are mostly copied, word for word, out of my diary, in which I jotted down 

 at the time, in as terse a manner as possible, my impression of the incidents, for the 

 purpose of calling the circumstances to mind at any future time ; and they seem to give 

 a truer idea of the occurrences than any more elaborate description, written at this 

 distance, could. 



