230 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
not killed my elephant, was that I had missed it altogether, 
But oh, those heavy tusks! 
Though I had but slight hopes of finding again so soon 
after scaring our game, I was out again the next morning and 
met Lorgete at a spot in the bush by arrangement. As I had 
feared, the elephants had cleared out, and there was no fresh 
spoor to be found. Lorgete was an unsatisfactory man to 
hunt with, and always annoyed me a good deal. He was too 
excitable, and had far too much to say, and a habit of halting 
every now and then to unburden himself of many irrelevant 
words, which is particularly vexing when one is intent upon 
the search for game. To-day he disgusted me with his 
constant humbug, so much so that I thought he must have 
been drinking mead. He showed plainly, too, that he was 
eaten up with jealousy of my much stauncher and more reliable 
friend Lesiat; so I was rather glad to get rid of him and 
return early to camp, especially as Squareface was lame and 
had foolishly followed me without telling me about it. Later 
in the day his son, who had just returned from Lesiat’s, told 
me that he had seen the spoor of our yesterday’s herd going 
towards El Bogoi. Under these circumstances I decided to 
move back in that direction. 
We accordingly shifted our quarters again, but, instead of 
returning to the main camp, struck across to a point higher up 
the stream, near to which I knew Baithai’s family was now 
encamped. A newly used path from the water showed us the 
way to the den—stinking like a hyena’s lair—quite near. It 
is extraordinary what miserable places these Ndorobo camps 
are ; huts hardly deserving the name—put to shame by many 
birds’ nests—just stuck down in the uncleared scrub without 
even a shady tree or open space. Baithai and his companions 
and their women came in just after we got there, the women 
laden with rotting elephant bones and putrid meat. It seemed 
he had found a small elephant dead, undoubtedly the one I 
had shot with my second barrel (and afterwards hit again) the 
