XXXVI 
THE HUNTER’S END 
3*i 
occurred in many ways, and I can only offer a few 
alternative suggestions in an endeavour to throw 
some light on the affair. Goddards rifle may have 
hung fire, owing to a defect in the cap of the cart¬ 
ridge (a mischance which has occurred on two or 
three occasions to myself, even when face to face 
with a charging elephant), or he may have fired at 
the animal and failed to place the bullet in a vital 
spot, the brute at once turning on him and killing 
him. Again, the elephant may have hidden silently 
in cover waiting for him, as elephants very often do 
when pursued, and, when Goddard was only a few 
paces distant, rushed out and taken him unawares. 
Lastly, there is a possibility that in his excitement 
he may have forgotten to reload his rifle. 
II 
A few years ago, a German, named Ringler, met 
with a violent end while hunting elephant in the 
Mbwehu bush, Kilwa district. Some two months 
afterwards, when in the same neighbourhood, I en¬ 
listed the services of the identical tracker that 
Ringler had engaged, and from him I secured an 
account of how the hunter had come by his death. 
He told me that Ringler, one day, wounded an 
elephant, and, on the day following, while tramping 
through the forest, suddenly came across an elephant. 
