132 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch. 
with the report that they had encountered the spoor 
of two large elephants which had passed close to my 
camp about half an hour before. At this good news, 
I immediately set forth, taking with me my two 
trackers, Simba and Ntawasie, and my boy, Tweegah 
—the last carrying a couple of water-bottles. 
After about half an hour’s spooring, we came up 
with our quarry, who were peacefully resting under 
the spreading branches of a magnificent nquaju tree, 
and every now and then tearing down a small branch 
and consuming it. With their extraordinarily keen 
scent, they became aware of our presence, and, to 
our disappointment, stampeded off wildly in different 
directions. We gave chase to the larger one, the 
impressions of whose feet in the soft dry sand were 
enormous and led us to hope that his tusks would 
prove of exceptional size. 
He showed himself a most wily old brute, for he 
promptly took to the cover of long elephant-grass, 
and for more than an hour kept dodging and 
following the wind, leading us through a terrible 
country, covered with a dense jungle of entangled 
vegetation, full of the insufferable upupu bean, and 
broken here and there by an occasional open space 
with trampled grass, where elephants are wont to 
rest. Just as the sun was setting, Ntawasie, 
descrying our quarry, suddenly dropped to his knees 
and pointed to a large tree, behind which the animal 
