CHAPTER XIII.. Harry's Shot--His Tracker's Predicament--After

HARRY'S SHOT--HIS TRACKER'S PREDICAMENT--AFTER HIPPOPOTAMI--ELEPHANTS AGAIN.

Harry concluded to wait; and, sure enough, the elephant came back, as the tracker predicted. He paused again at the edge of the forest, and then came out and proceeded at a rapid walk along the path.

Harry raised his rifle and fired at the vulnerable spot, just between the eye and ear. He wounded the elephant, but did not bring him down, and then the animal turned and charged upon him, elevating his trunk and giving a vicious roar as he ran upon his antagonist.

Harry took advantage of the tree in the same way that I had done; and, according to his account, his antics were very much like mine, which the reader already knows about. The tracker climbed into the limbs of a small tree close by, thinking that there would be a place of safety. The elephant saw him ascending the tree, and abandoned the chase for Harry, in the hope of capturing the tracker.

He got under the tracker's tree just as the latter was a foot or so beyond the reaching-point. Had the elephant been five seconds earlier he could have seized the tracker with his trunk and dragged him to the ground. Failing in this, he determined to shake the man down.

Stepping back eight or ten feet, the brute ran at the tree with the force of a battering-ram. The tracker--a lithe and active Kafir--knew that his safety and life depended upon clinging to the tree, and he hung to it, as the sailors say, "enough to squeeze the tar out of the rigging."

Three times the elephant butted at that tree, and while he was doing so Harry was making a diversion on which the infuriated animal had not counted. With his rifle at full cock, and taking advantage of the shelter afforded by a few bushes, Harry crept around until he had the elephant broadside on and not more than twelve yards distant; he gave him a second and a third shot in his most vulnerable points. The animal abandoned his tree-shaking and started again in pursuit of Harry. He took only three or four steps, however, before pausing, trembling, and then falling dead to the ground.

Then we came around to where Jack had been stationed. He had also killed his elephant, but, unfortunately, the animal was a young one. It was a tusker, it is true, but the tusks were small, as was also the elephant.

"As for a story," said Jack, "I'm like the needy knife-grinder: I've none to tell. This little fellow came along, and I shot him; and that's all there is about it."

"Well, if that's all about it," said I, "we'll go back to camp and send the men out to bring in the tusks. It's a good morning's work all around, and we ought to be satisfied with it."

By the time we got back to camp it was past noon, and we were, literally, hungry as hunters. The cook was ready for us with a dinner of gemsbok-steak and stewed rhinoceros. Rhinoceros is not by any means a bad dish, and many is the meal I have made of it. You can have it in a steak, a roast, or a stew. I think it goes best in a stew; but there is a difference of opinion on that point, just as there is in everything else in the cooking line. A young elephant is not at all bad eating, and elephants' feet, no matter whether the animal be young or old, are one of the delicacies of Africa.

To cook an elephant's foot, and do it properly, requires time and attention. First get your foot. Then dig a hole in the ground and build a fire over it; keep this fire going for two or three hours, until you have got the ground hot all around, and the hole is filled with coals and glowing ashes. Then throw your elephant's foot into the hole, covering it over with the hot ashes and embers, and build more fire over it. It will take from one hour to five or six hours to cook the foot, depending upon its size and the extent and heat of the fire. When you think it is done let it stay a little longer--say half an hour--then rake it out of the ashes, and after letting it cool enough so that you can handle it, serve it up. It will be found to be a delicious semi-gelatinous mass, suggesting broiled pigs' feet, but as much better than that commonplace dish as the elephant is nobler and larger than our bristly friend of the pigsty.

While at dinner we discussed various things to do in the afternoon, but found that all were sufficiently weary after the morning's work to be willing to keep quiet the rest of the day. At the same time we wanted to do something, and so it was proposed that we go down to the river--about two miles--and try for a hippopotamus. The hippo is a difficult beast to shoot, as he sticks pretty closely to the water, and it is very unusual to find him on land. The time he spends out of the water is nearly always at night. The natives take advantage of this peculiarity of the beast, and make traps and pitfalls for him; and that reminds me that I came very near getting my death-blow from a hippopotamus-trap, one afternoon, while I was walking along a path near the river-bank. This is the way the thing was rigged:

An iron spear was stuck in the end of a heavy stick of wood; and as if the weight of the stick was not enough, some heavy stones were tied on each side of it, close to the end. This spear was suspended, with the point downward, right above a path which the hippopotamus followed on the way from the river to his feeding-ground. The cord by which the spear was suspended was carried over the limb of a tree and then down to the ground, where it was fastened to a trigger. This trigger was connected with a cord that extended across the path.

Now, a hippopotamus, in coming along the path, does not try to step over the cord, but pushes his clumsy feet against it. In the first place, he is taking his walk at night, and cannot see the cord; and even if he could see it his legs are too short to allow him to step over it. So he just shuffles along, pushes against it, releases the trigger, and if the trap has been properly arranged the spear comes down directly between his shoulders; his spine is pretty certainly cut in two, and if he is not killed outright he is unable to leave the spot. The natives find him in the morning, and despatch him very quickly if any life remains.

I had heard about these traps before I came into the hippopotamus region, but had forgotten all about them, when one day I was walking along a path and came to a cord just such as I have described. It was rather high for me to step over, and the thought occurred to me that somebody must have lost a piece of cord there and I had better pick it up. I was extending my hand to take hold of it when I happened to look upward, and saw, directly above me, the weighted spear, ready to fall the instant the trigger was disturbed! I backed away from the spot very quickly, and took a course around the trap instead of venturing farther along the path.

Harry and Jack were ready for the hippopotamus-hunt before I was, and they started off, I agreeing to follow. They had previously sent away a dozen or more natives--some of them our own men, and others picked up in the vicinity--to prepare the raft necessary for a raid upon the amphibious brutes. It is better to shoot them from a raft of reeds--which can be constructed in a few minutes--than to shoot them from a boat. They can overturn a boat and make it decidedly nasty for the occupants; it is true they can shake up a raft somewhat, but they cannot overturn it or sink it anywhere near as easily as they can a boat.

My friends had been gone ten or fifteen minutes, and I was just getting ready to start, when Mirogo, my elephant-tracker, came rushing in, and said there were elephants back in the forest where we had shot them in the morning.

Here was a temptation that I could not well resist. Elephants are bigger game than hippopotami, and there is a great deal more glory, and also a good deal more risk, in shooting them. I started a man off to tell Harry and Jack to go ahead with their fun and not wait for me, and also to inform them as to the cause of my detention.

Well, we went after the elephants--Mirogo, Kalil, and I. This time I put my large cartridge-belt around my waist--I had worn my small one before--and as we neared the forest I filled it with cartridges from the supply which Kalil carried.

Mirogo had left a native to keep an eye on the movements of the herd, and as we approached the forest the man met us and guided us on our course. The herd was considerably farther to the west than the one of the morning, and as it had not been alarmed in any way it was supposed not to be the one whose numbers we had reduced with our rifles.

The locality which the new herd had sought was not at all to my liking, as the ground at the edge of the forest was covered with wait-a-bit thorn-bushes; and the reader will allow me to remark that the wait-a-bit thorn is one of the most aggravating things which the African continent produces. I do not know who gave this bush its name, but he was certainly somebody with a practical turn of mind. The wait-a-bit thorn is barbed like a fish-hook, and whenever you get into one of the bushes you cannot get out in a hurry; as fast as you release one piece of your clothing another gets entangled, and very often the stranger leaves the greater part of his wardrobe in the possession of the bush. This is particularly the case when he happens to be in a hurry; when an elephant, buffalo, lion, or other savage beast is charging upon a hunter, and a wait-a-bit thorn-bush stands in the way, the hunter has many lacerations, both of clothing and flesh, in order to escape. The natives treat one of these bushes with the greatest respect. Jack suggested one day that the natives went naked because they could not afford to supply thorn-bushes with clothing.

We outflanked those wait-a-bits and moved into the forest, where there were no worse things than creepers. Every few minutes we paused to listen, and before a great while we heard the elephants breaking branches, and evidently feeding leisurely. Mirogo led the way, and I followed, with Kalil close at my heels, carrying my gun. We had got quite close to the herd, whose size we could not make out, though Mirogo thought there were not fewer than half a dozen elephants in it.

We were about a hundred yards away--perhaps a hundred and fifty--when the elephants paused in their feeding and began to snort uneasily. Mirogo fell back to me, and whispered that he thought something was disturbing them on the other side. It was evident we had not disturbed them, as the little wind there was blew from them to us. I concluded that it was a rhinoceros, or perhaps a buffalo, which was beyond them.

The elephant is not friendly to either of those animals, and he is especially hostile to the rhinoceros. When two of those creatures meet face to face there is pretty sure to be a fight. They do not exactly go around hunting for an encounter, but they do not, on the other hand, make any great effort to avoid one. They are terrible antagonists, the horn of the rhinoceros doing fearful work in ripping up the elephant, while, on the other hand, the elephant's tusks are apt to make deep perforations in the thick skin of the rhinoceros.

The crashing in the woods sounded nearer, and the character of it showed that the animals had stopped feeding and were moving toward us. I seized my gun and got ready for work; and I was not a moment too soon in doing so. A stately bull-elephant appeared, walking slowly, head on, in my direction. I was screened from him behind a tree, and the course that he was taking cut me off from anything but a shot directly at the forehead. He was within twenty yards of where I stood, and had not perceived me. Mirogo was off at one side, and Kalil was crouched flat to the ground directly behind me.