PERILOUS POSITION. 
383 
fortunately, from the powder being damp, hung fire, 
till X was in the act of taking it from my shoulder, 
when it went off, and the ball merely grazed the 
side of the head. Halting only for an instant, the 
animal again rushed furiously forward. X fell; X 
cannot say whether struck down by her trunk or 
not. She then made a thrust at me with her tusk. 
Luckily for me she had only one, which still more 
luckily missed its mark. She then caught me with 
her trunk by the middle, threw me beneath her 
fore-feet and knocked me about between them for 
a little space. X was scarcely in a condition to 
compute the number of minutes very accurately. 
Once she pressed her foot on my chest with such 
force that X actually felt the bones, as it were, 
bending under the weight; and once she trod on 
the middle of my arm, which fortunately lay flat on 
the ground at the time. During this rough hand¬ 
ling, however, X never entirely lost my recollection, 
else X have little doubt she would have settled my 
accounts with this world. But owing to the round¬ 
ness of her foot, X generally managed, by twisting 
my body aud limbs, to escape her direct tread. 
While X was still undergoing this buffeting, Lieu¬ 
tenant Chisholm, of the Royal Artillery Corps, and 
Diedrich, a Hottentot, had come up, and fired 
several shots at her, one of which hit her in the 
shoulder; and at the same time her companions, or 
young ones, retiring, and screaming to her from the 
edge of the forest, she reluctantly left me, giving 
me a cuff or two with her hind feet in passing. X 
got up, picked up my gun, and staggered away as 
