A THRILLING CHARGE 
207 
didn’t stop. There was barely time for us to get out 
of the way. I ran sideways toward a little mound 
that furnished some protection, while Hassan, with 
a coolness and courage that I both admired and en¬ 
vied, stood still until the big elephant was within ten 
feet of him and then leaped to one side as the three 
beasts swept by him, carried onward by the impetus 
of their mad rush. As the big one passed it made a 
vicious swing at him with its trunk. 
Fortunately the elephants continued in their 
course and we followed them with my big rifle again 
reloaded and ready. Once more they turned in 
toward the river and were completely swallowed up 
in the tall reeds. We again waded in after them and 
had gone only a few yards when we once more saw 
the angry head of the big one looming up as it came 
toward us. I fired point-blank at the base of the 
trunk and the beast stopped suddenly. Then it 
slowly turned and as it was about to disappear in 
the tall elephant grass again I fired at its backbone. 
The huge bulk collapsed and disappeared, buried in 
the reeds. Hassan yelled that it was dead, but we 
couldn’t see for the grass. The situation now was 
perilous in the extreme. The river made a sharp 
bend at this point like an incomplete letter O, with a 
narrow neck of land through which the elephants 
had passed when I had shot. At the narrow neck it 
was about a hundred feet across while the depth of 
the “O” was about three hundred feet and the width 
about two hundred and fifty feet. This small penin¬ 
sula was matted with a jungle growth of high grass 
