258 ELEPHANT-HUNTING [ch. x 
Early in the afternoon some of the scouts returned 
with news that three bull elephants were in a piece of 
forest a couple of miles distant, and thither we went. 
It was an open grove of heavy thorn timber beside a 
strip of swamp ; among the trees the grass grew tall, and 
there were many thickets of abutilon, a flowering shrub 
a dozen feet high. On this the elephants were feeding. 
Tarlton’s favourite sport was lion-hunting, but he was 
also a first-class elephant-hunter, and he brought me 
up to these bulls in fine style. Although only three 
hundred yards away, it took us two hours to get close 
to them. Tarlton and the “ shenzis ”—wild natives, 
called in Swahili (a kind of African chinook) *‘wa- 
shenzi”—who were with us climbed tree after tree, 
first to place the elephants, and then to see if they 
carried ivory heavy enough to warrant my shooting 
them. At last Tarlton brought me to within fifty 
yards of them. Two were feeding in bush which hid 
them from view, and the third stood between, facing 
us. We could only see the top of his head and back, 
and not his tusks, and could not tell whether he was 
worth shooting. Much puzzled, we stood where we 
were, peering anxiously at the huge half-hidden game. 
Suddenly there was a slight eddy in the wind, up went 
the elephant’s trunk, twisting to and fro in the air; 
evidently he could not catch a clear scent, but in 
another moment we saw the three great dark forms 
moving gently off through the bush. As rapidly as 
possible, following the trails already tramped by the 
elephants, we walked forward, and after a hundred 
yards Tarlton pointed to a big bull with good tusks 
standing motionless behind some small trees seventy 
yards distant. As I aimed at his head he started to 
move off. The first bullet from the heavy Holland 
