IN SEARCH OF BIG GAME. 
53 
After having slept they had not commenced to feed but 
had spent their time idling 'about, rubbing themselves against 
trees, and fanning themselves with wisps of palm leaves rudely 
torn from their stems, ami as rudely thrown away when the 
elephants moved on. Tracks were everywhere and after 
following the general direction that the eh pliants had taken 
for about lifty yards we stopped to listen. Presently we heard 
a sqtielch, followed by a sound which might have been made 
by a gigantic squirt in the hands of some mischievous imp of 
the forest, That elephant is in a river bathinj^ " said Yasin, 
*' if we hurry up we shall catch him there," It at once Hashed 
across our 'minds that the beast would probably be in a 
comparatively clear spot if on the river bank or in the river 
itself, not that the jungle was ver\' dense where we were. 
Hurrying in the direction of the sound and intendinf:^ to follow 
the tracks of the bigger bull we soon found that it was im- 
possible to tell which was which as they had l)oth been ronnd 
and round over the same ground close to the river bank, but 
Yasin pointed to where one of them had rubbed himself 
against a tree and I thought that there could not be any 
mistake about the height of that great mud smear. Almost 
before I realised what had happened I found myself looking 
down on an elephant's back. The ground that we were 
following suddenly broke away and had an almost vertical 
drop of about 15 feet. At the bottom of this drop was a 
ledge of about ten yards wide which terminated in a small 
river. The elephant was on the ledge. I could have thrown 
mv open handkerchief on to his back. His bead was towards 
me but from our relative positions I could see nothing except 
the top of it, and I could not see bis tusks. To fire at the top of 
an elephant's head from directly above him was a new 
experience to me, but there was no time to consider the 
possibility of making another move, so making as good a 
calculation as I could as to the position of the brain— fired. ^ 
The elephant slowly swung round and presented his 
hind quarters to me in almost the exact position that his 
head had been. He then took one step forward. As quickly 
as I realised that 1 had not hit his brain so did I grasp that I 
must now fire at the root of his spine if I did not want to lose 
him. He fell to the shot to rise no more. Awaiting a few 
moments to be quite certain that he wns dead, we scrambled 
down the steep bank and rtm round the elephant to look at 
his tusks. Horror of horrors I had shot the wrong elephant, 
I cannot describe my feelings, they were too awful for words 
to describe. I had done what I had managed to avoid doing 
for years, that was killing an elephant with small tusks. 
