2io ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch. 
peacefully sleeping, a party of Arab slavers and 
their miscreant followers, the ruka-ruka, swooped 
down upon the huts, butchered the old men and 
women in cold blood, and captured the young men, 
women and children for slaves. Wakened by the 
noise of the burning thatch and the agonized cries 
of the wounded and dying outside, the headman 
had risen from his kitanda (bed) and rushed out of 
the blazing hut. His wife, carrying their only child, 
had just dashed out before him, and ere he could 
overtake them, he saw in the light from the 
conflagration a ruka-ruka run up and despatch the 
woman and babe with a scimitar before his very 
eyes. Springing upon the fiend, he killed him with 
a blow from his knife, and fled into the comparative 
safety of the forest. 
From that evil day, he had never returned to the 
haunts of men, but had ever since dwelt in the 
pori, living on locusts and fruit and wild honey, 
supplemented with the birds and small game that he 
had managed to trap. Constant brooding on the 
awful disaster that had befallen him and his people 
had at length driven him mad. Often, the people of 
the neighbouring villages had caught and brought 
him into their kraals and treated him kindly, but he 
had never stayed long with them, usually seizing the 
first opportunity to escape. 
I made my men cut the ropes with which they 
