350 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
Soon after dark the hyenas began to gather at the carcasses 
and to quarrel among themselves as they gorged. Toward 
morning a lion came near and uttered a kind of booming, 
long-drawn moan, an ominous and menacing sound. The 
hyenas answered with an extraordinary chorus of yelling, 
howling, laughing, and chuckling, as weird a volume of 
noise as any to which I ever listened. At dawn we stole 
down to the carcasses in the faint hope of a shot at the lion. 
However, he was not there; but as we came toward one 
carcass a hyena raised its head seemingly from beside the 
elephant’s belly, and I brained it with the little Spring- 
field. On walking up it appeared that I need not have 
shot at all. The hyena, which was swollen with elephant 
meat, had gotten inside the huge body, and had then bit¬ 
ten a hole through the abdominal wall of tough muscle and 
thrust his head through. The wedge-shaped head had 
slipped through the hole all right, but the muscle had then 
contracted, and the hyena was fairly caught, with its body 
inside the elephant’s belly, and its head thrust out through 
the hole. We took several photos of the beast in its queer 
trap. 
After breakfast we rode back to our camp by the swamp. 
Akeley and Clark were working hard at the elephant skins; 
but Mrs. Akeley, Stevenson, and McCutcheon took lunch 
with us at our camp. They had been having a very success¬ 
ful hunt; Mrs. Akeley had to her credit a fine maned lion 
and a bull elephant with enormous tusks. This was the 
first safari we had met while we were out in the field; though 
in Nairobi, and once or twice at outlying bomas, we had 
met men about to start on, or returning from, expeditions; 
and as we marched into Meru we encountered the safari of 
