TWO ELEPHANTS KILLED 



183 



the dead elephant and only send a few men on to Sapari to look 

 for the natives. We therefore despatched Lembasso and thirty 

 porters who did not like elephant-meat, whilst the rest of the 

 men happily divided the spoil. 



The Count had thought that all his shots had struck one of 

 the elephants only, but our people presently came upon a second 

 fresh blood spoor, so that it seemed as if the two elephants had, 

 unobserved, changed places in the thicket. We went off at 

 once, expecting we should soon come upon the badly wounded 

 bull. It was easy enough to follow the spoor at first, great 

 patches of blood staining the loamy or sandy soil, but further 

 on the ground became rocky, and the blood only occurred 

 in drops. The chase grew more and more interesting, how- 

 ever, and all our hunting zeal was aroused. More than once 

 we lost the spoor, and had to begin our search again, but at 

 last we had the great delight of coming upon the animal lying 

 dead on the ground, a good geographical mile from wdiere he 

 had been shot. The bullet had passed right through the body 

 and was imbedded under the skin, which had swollen into 

 a lump, on the other side. Near the corpse was a herd of four 

 females and four young, which we left undisturbed. In track- 

 ing the second elephant we came upon a third, which we at 

 first, of course, took for the wounded animal. It, too, fell, after 

 half a dozen shots. 



At four o'clock in the afternoon our men returned to tell 

 us that they had not gone as far as Sapari, as there had been no 

 water by the way, which made us the more glad that the 

 meeting with the elephants had led us to camp where we did. 

 Lembasso had gone on alone to search carefully for traces of 

 his people's presence, and did not get into camp again till nine 

 o'clock in the evening. He had met no one, and only found a 

 few traces of recent occupation. This was the more dis- 

 appointing as, in the interests of science, we were most anxious 



