i8o 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
usual cautious tactics in the excitement of our first success for 
the trip, I foolishly talked exultingly to my men, who had 
come up, and again alarmed the others, which had been 
standing close by, though hidden from us, and thus lost our 
second splendid chance. Following, however, in their wake, 
we got close up again to them, standing in the grass jungle. 
One faced me, and as I tried to get into a position to shoot 
from, it approached. I waited for it to halt or give me a 
chance at its chest; but, instead of stopping, it came on 
quicker, while its chest was covered by the tall reedy grass, 
and, when within five or six paces, I felt constrained to fire 
in its face, and try to get out of sight among the stems of the 
brake. Luckily the shot turned it. Blood showed on the 
grass, but we did not follow it at once, going after others 
instead. I felt it to be unpleasantly risky work in this tangle 
of tall swamp grass. Impenetrable out of the elephant tracks, 
and often difficultly so even in them, it was high enough to 
conceal an elephant entirely unless very very close, and 
seldom allowed more than the head to be seen even then. 
Fortunately the wind, which kept pretty steadily in one 
quarter, came in stiff gusts now and then, drowning the noise 
one made in forcing one’s way through the rustling grass, 
which also, by its waving about, helped to obscure one’s move¬ 
ments. Taking advantage of one of these gusts, I crept in 
near, once more, to a clump of elephants, and succeeded in 
knocking over a couple more, like ninepins, with the head 
shot. 1 
As the elephants seemed now to have moved back up 
the valley, that is down wind, we struck across for the foot 
of the hills on the west side, so as to get round to leeward 
1 I am afraid this abrupt way of putting it sounds rather like bragging. But these 
sentences are mostly copied, word for word, out of my diary, in which I jotted down 
at the time, in as terse a manner as possible, my impression of the incidents, for the 
purpose of calling the circumstances to mind at any future time ; and they seem to give 
a truer idea of the occurrences than any more elaborate description, written at this 
distance, could. 
