232 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch. 
gave him the coup de grace. Rushing up to my 
tracker, who I felt sure had been killed, I was 
delighted to find not only that he was alive but 
that his injuries were far less serious than the 
nature of the encounter would have led one to 
expect. The blow that he had received from the 
buffalo’s horn had badly bruised his thigh and cut 
a deep gash in the flesh, but luckily no bones were 
broken. The flesh wound I speedily disinfected 
and stitched up, a fine slip of sharpened bamboo 
serving as needle, the thread being procured by 
unravelling the twill of my khaki shirt—such is 
the rough and ready surgery of the pori—and ere 
a month had passed, Malingum had quite recovered 
from the ill-effects of his unexpected encounter. 
The natives of the neighbouring village after¬ 
wards informed me that this very buffalo, which 
they said was undoubtedly mad, had killed two of 
their comrades who had followed it up. 
The sequel attaching to this little adventure is 
as follows. When Malingum had quite recovered 
from his injuries, I noticed that he suffered from 
severe mental depression, and as he was one of 
those happy, laughing, devil-may-care, God-send- 
holidays-and-Sundays-often kind of fellows, who 
appeared to have a sweetheart in every village 
through which we passed, I was naturally at a loss 
to account for his strange change of manner. On 
