A THRILLING CHARGE 
203 
of the grass and noisily ran away, giving the alarm. 
The elephants began feeling in the air with their 
trunks and their ears began to wave uneasily. Fi¬ 
nally they turned and seemed about to go away. 
Then Fred saw, a short distance to the right, some 
more elephants that had previously been hidden by 
the trees. We both whispered to Ake to stop, but 
he either did not hear us on account of his heavy sun 
hat or else was too intent upon the elephants in 
front to heed. 
“Ake,” whispered Fred, “there’s a good bull over 
there with good tusks. Wait a minute.” But Ake, 
camera in position, continued to advance and so we 
followed. The elephants, a big cow and a half- 
grown one, were now facing us with ears wide 
spread. They looked very nasty. I thought they 
would turn and run away and was not uneasy about 
the outcome. But to my great surprise they started 
toward us, first slowly and then at a rapid trot, 
steadily gaining in swiftness. It was a real charge 
and we yelled to scare them off. The big cow was 
in the lead and she had not the slightest intention 
of being scared. Her one idea was to annihilate us. 
We raised our rifles and continued to yell, but on 
she rushed. She was only thirty yards away when 
Jimmy fired, Fred fired, and then I. The huge 
animal sank on her four knees and the half-grown 
one turned off and stopped, confused and angry. 
Akeley had got a splendid photograph of the 
charging cow and now he took one of the smaller 
beast before we^ approached the cow. Upon our ad- 
