Elephants 



the tail end of the herd, consisting of one or two stragglers, 

 with small tusks, who were in difficulties with the mud. 

 The main herd was some distance in advance of these, and 

 from this direction, shortly afterwards, came the most 

 indescribable hubbub it is possible to imagine. 



Although invisible, the soft nature of the ground on which 

 we were treading soon became apparent to my two followers 

 and myself by the lact of our falling into deep holes made 

 by the feet of the passing elephants in the increasingly soft 

 mud. From this it soon became obvious we had followed 

 the elephants into a hidden morass. 



Realising now the cause of the uproar which still con- 

 tinued on ahead, and that I had before me the chance of an 

 elephant hunter's life-time, I left my natives behind and, 

 filling my pockets with cartridges, I made a detour to avoid 

 the rearmost elephants and the pit-holes, putting forth all 

 my energy into reaching the spot from whence the commotion 

 proceeded. 



A few hundred yards brought me out into an open expanse 

 of low bush, and there, splashing, pushing and anon 

 trumpeting, struggled a heaving herd of some seventy 

 elephants, all with few exceptions completely bogged and 

 entirely at my mercy ! A fortune in ivory to a poor hunter ! 



As I stood there in the deep water, too excited to feel 

 tired, wet, or cold, and knowing that by my own endeavour 

 I had hunted down the great animals before me, I was sorely 

 tempted, like the old Dutch hunters, to grasp my opportunity 

 — shoot the lot and be damned to the consequences ! 

 Temptation (a curious form of it some people will think) in 

 its specious way whispered, " There are uncountable thousands 

 of elephants in Africa. Why worry about those few ? They 



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