52 
THREE MONTHS IN PAHANG 
rewarded by fin ding wliert' theyliad crossed the river w ithin the 
last few hours. The Datoh Rajah Kiah, who has had many 
years experience of huntin^^ wild elephants has told me that 
where one comes across twti elephants that consort together in 
the way that these two had done they would invariably be 
relations, either father and son or two brothers. Had the 
solitary elephant been unrelated to the herd which he had met 
there would most certainh' have been a fierce fight between 
the two bulls. I do not know how true the relation theory is, 
and 1 iea%"e my readers to draw their own deductions. The 
tracks of these two bulls constantly tlivided and we had to keep 
a very sharp look out that we did not follow the smaller uf the 
two, never knowing when they would part for good. Climbing 
up a stee[) hill we found that one track had gone straight up 
the hill and the other rouiul the hill, the larger beast keeping 
to the lower ground. Skirting the hill we again met the other 
tracks and almost at the same time heard the elejihants in the 
valley below ns. I was ahead a little with Yasin and we 
halted to close up our ranks. There was a well defined game 
path down the side of the hill and on this we waited. Wan 
Hadji and the others came along in a few minutes and we all 
listened to the noises going on below us. The elephants were 
evidently resting, the swisli, swish, of their trunks and the 
flap flap of their ears being most distinctly lieajd by us perched 
on the hill side. I was rathei" annoyed that now that I had 
got up to what was certainly a big elephant that I should have 
to pick him out from liis companion. It is so much easier to 
tackle a beast wdien he is by himself. While awaiting Wan 
Hadji's arrival my mind was'hiled with the thought that the 
time was now near at hand when I was to have the chance 
for which I had travelled many miles and for which I had 
passed by other opportunities which had not seemed to me to 
have been quite what I had come on this expedition for. 
To be within a hundred yards or so of a magnificent bull 
elephant, which I knew was absolutely unconscious of our 
proximity, and to know that possibly one false move might 
now ruin the toil of weeks, was sufficient to make me feel to 
its fullest extent that instinct of primeval man when his actual 
existence depended upon his success as a hunter. 
As soon as I had impressed on Wan Hadji and his party 
that on no account were they to move from their present 
position until I called to them or until they heard a shot, 
Yasin and I descended the hill. We soon found where the 
elephants had been lying down, but when we got on to the 
lower ground we could no longer hear them. 
