XV 
RETURN TO LAKE RUDOLPH 
349 
he was fatally hit, the result proved that I must have made a 
bad shot. 
The elephant ran straight into a large patch of jungle 
which extended along the shore, at this part, from just beyond 
where he had been drinking. Now this was that peculiar kind 
of dense cover already described in an account of a hunt in 
the valley of the Seya, mainly composed of a plant which 
grows in low, damp situations where the ground is salt, which 
forms an impenetrable and almost solid mass of vegetation. I 
was not in the humour to rush into thick cover, but by working 
round the edge we were able to get along between the water 
and the thicket. The jungle was not very high, but there was 
not a tree of any kind to get a view from ; however, finding a 
spot where there was a slight knoll or rise in the ground, I got 
on to Juma’s shoulders and was able to see over the cover, and 
there my bull stood in the middle, the top of his back and head 
showing above it. He was standing alone, but farther on I 
could see the foreheads or back ridges of some twenty others, 
perhaps more, standing in a clump, evidently on their guard, 
facing outwards and frequently trying the wind for suspicious 
odours with their uplifted trunks. I tried every way to get a 
shot at the solitary bull, which I took to be the same I had 
shot at, without actually crawling to right under it, but could 
see nothing but the top of its forehead, even when I had entered 
the jungle by a path running parallel with the shore and got 
quite near it. 
I felt ashamed of myself; it was ignominious to be beaten. 
At last I mustered up courage, and, though I didn’t like it—I 
confess I did not like it a bit—crept through a narrow little 
overgrown path, at right angles to that we had come along, to 
within certainly considerably under ten paces of it. The wind 
was right, and though it had nearly died away about sunrise, 
was blowing pretty steadily now. I sat down in my tunnel, and 
could see the elephant’s hind feet and a little of the leg above, 
but no other part of it. I determined, since nothing else was 
