6o 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
went out of sight; so I chose a cow with long and very straight 
tusks, which stood at the outside of the clump, giving me a 
fine chance at her temple, and had the satisfaction of seeing 
her throw up her trunk and fall dead to my shot. I had now 
used all the .577 cartridges I had with me, as I had unluckily 
omitted to replenish my pouches before starting on the morning 
of this red-letter day ; so I fell back upon the Martini-Henry, 
which my men passed up to me, afterwards throwing me 
cartridges one by one. The elephants were moving off, but, 
passing diagonally across my position, were still within shot. 
The cover was very high and dense, so that they were hidden 
even from my commanding perch ; but two stood with their 
heads in view long enough to give me another opportunity, and 
I succeeded in dropping both. The last fell with its head rest¬ 
ing on the other. It proved to be a young one with very small 
teeth, unfortunately, but in such thick jungle it is impossible 
to pick and choose much. I had now eleven elephants dead. 
The sun by this time was low, so that it would take us all 
our time to reach camp by dark ; and as I did not feel sure 
how the natives here, against whom I had been warned, might 
be disposed towards the white intruder (though so far as I had 
seen they seemed friendly enough), I thought it prudent to go 
back without further delay. I accordingly had the tails of the 
last five elephants cut off—getting a bit of a scare over one, 
which could not be found at first, but proved to be dead safe 
enough, to my relief—and tramped hard back to my boma, 
meeting before I got there some of my men, who, as it began 
to get dusk and I had not arrived, had started to see what had 
become of me. I was, of course, well pleased with my success, 
though I considered I ought to have secured a couple more 
elephants, and particularly the big fellow I had wounded. I 
had not been feeling very fit in the morning, but that had gone 
off, and at night I was as fresh as possible, my feet, luckily, 
being nearly all right again. I had used in all just twenty 
cartridges. 
