The Eastern Congo 



Although all the sjmipathy I got from my friends was : 

 " Well, Barns, I don't think much of that darned old croc, 

 if he selected your leg for a feed ! " (referring to my sinewy 

 member) — the experience is one that few of them would like 

 to go through themselves and they little know that the mere 

 thought of the encounter had the power, for many months 

 afterwards, to bring a chill of fear to my heart and at times 

 would make me start up in the night from my sleep, with 

 a cold sweat upon me, having dreamt of the living tomb 

 that was so nearly mine. 



As a tribute to Krupp steel (if that were needed), I might 

 say that the barrel of the German 8-mm. Mauser rifle, that 

 saved my life and which I had fired under water, on examin- 

 ation showed only a small bulge in the barrel and two weals 

 in the rifling, to account for its unwonted treatment. But 

 it would only shoot straight at a hundred yards when the 

 back sight was put up to 350. 



Lewis, who stayed behind in the Luangwa River whilst I 

 was recovering from the croc, bite, found one of the elephants 

 we had wounded but never got the big one. My comrade, 

 to my great regret, not long afterwards contracted sleeping- 

 sickness on another elephant shoot, from which he succumbed 

 on his way to England. 



To close this chapter I will give an account of what was 

 under the circumstances the most strenuous day's elephant 

 hunting that I can remember, and which has been brought 

 vividly back to my mind by an account I read lately, of 

 the old Dutch elephant hunters driving a big herd of 

 elephant into a bog where they slaughtered them indis- 

 criminately. 



At the commencement of the Great War my wife and myself 



242 



