CHAPTER III 
TOUCH AND GO 
Near the Sultan Leanduka’s village on the 
Luwegu River, in German East Africa, I had, in 
the Autumn of 1908, a most exciting adventure 
with an elephant. All day long, we had kept 
doggedly on the tracks of a herd of five big bulls, at 
one time forcing our way through dense scrub 
bristling with thorns, at another warily spooring 
among belts of giant reeds which marked the dried- 
up courses of tributary streamlets of the Luwegu, 
itself, at the time, a mere winding expanse of soft, 
dry sand. Towards evening, we came up with our 
quarry in an open space, where the sere grass had 
been levelled by winds and trampled by game, and 
here I managed, without any notable incident, to 
account for four of the herd. The fifth, I wounded 
in the region of the heart as he was bolting full 
speed across a clearing (where the natives had fired 
the grass), dotted here and there with a few stunted 
trees. Immediately on being hit, he pivoted round, 
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