Elephants 



like apparition, produced the result stated. His idea of 

 walking on all fours towards an elephant, standing broadside 

 in the open thirty or forty yards away, to have a look at 

 his tusks, was a joke that fairly tickled me for many a day. 



At the time, however, I was testing the wind, with all 

 eyes on the elephant, who having previously taken his fill 

 at the stream was by now engaged in pulling up with his 

 trunk big wisps of grass on the edge of the dambo, and con- 

 veying them to his mouth after giving them a good banging 

 against his forehead to shake off dirt from the roots. 



I watched him for some seconds and although his tusks 

 were not noticeably big he seemed to be a giant in size, so 

 approaching with my double 8-bore to within twenty-five 

 paces, I let fly at his left shoulder, first one barrel then the 

 other. Recovering himself, however, with astonishing rapidity 

 from such an onslaught, the elephant had soon reached the 

 neighbouring forest and before I could fire a third shot was 

 lost in the fog that still hung around us. 



Kamwendo (who was now sobering up in the keen morning 

 air) and I lost little time in getting after our quarry, and as 

 the grass-fires had burnt the bush in patches, spooring was 

 fairly easy, although at times, owing to cross-spoors and 

 the dry state of the vegetation, my tracker was at fault, 

 necessitating circling round to pick up the spoor again. We 

 also found that in spite of the bad wounds he must have 

 received, there was little blood on the trail after the first 

 few miles. 



Having been going since sunrise, the early part of the 

 afternoon found us entering a thick patch of forest, whose 

 cool shade after the baking heat without, invited a rest. 

 Throwing myself down and having had a snack of food, I 



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