“All this time I never saw my horse, which must have been lying amongst the grass where he had been thrown to the ground. I thought he was dead; or perhaps, to speak more truly, I was so engrossed with my own affairs that I did not think about him at all. I stood now just on the highest ground of a gentle rise, which sloped gradually down to an open glade, in which, from where I was, I could see two dead elephants. Just then I saw a Caffre coming across the opening, and went down to meet him, leaving my elephant still standing on the spot where she had knocked me down. Being unarmed,—for my gun had been dashed from my hand when I fell,—I dared not go near her to look for it. Upon meeting the Caffre, I hastily told him what had happened. The elephant was not now visible, being just beyond the crest of the rise, about two hundred yards distant; but I only stopped to take some cartridges from my trousers pocket, and put them in my belt, and then, accompanied by the boy, returned to the scene of the accident to look for my rifle, and see what had become of my horse. On topping the rise, we saw him standing without the saddle; but the elephant had walked away, and was no longer visible. Going up to my horse, I found that he had received an ugly wound in the buttock from behind, from which the blood was streaming down the leg: otherwise, barring a few abrasions, he was unhurt. Whilst the boy was searching for my rifle, I looked round for the elephant, which I knew had only just moved away, and, seeing a cow standing amongst some bushes not two hundred yards from me, made sure it was the one that had so nearly made an example of me. The Caffre now came up with my rifle and saddle, the girth of which was broken. The rifle, having been open at the breech when it fell to the ground, was full of sand; so that it was not until I had taken the lever out, using the point of the Caffre’s assegai for a screw-driver, that I managed to get it to work. I then approached the elephant, which all the time had been standing where I first saw her, and, cautiously advancing to within fifty yards of her, took a careful aim, and gave her a shot behind the shoulder, which brought her to the ground with a crash. Pushing in another cartridge, I ran up, and gave her a shot in the back of the head to make sure of her.”
PLATE XIII.
AFRICAN ELEPHANT. LEANING AGAINST A TREE.
Hunters do not always escape so fortunately as did Mr. Selous. One of the native hunters employed by him, named Quabeet, followed a bull elephant into the bush, and was never seen alive again. The brute must have laid in wait for him, and rushed out, taking him unawares. The bushes around the locality were levelled to the ground; and, when finally the body was discovered, it was torn in three pieces. “The chest, with head and arms attached, which had been wrenched from the trunk just below the breast-bone, lying in one place; one leg and thigh, that had been torn off at the pelvis, in another; and the remainder in a third. The right arm had been broken in two places, and the hand crushed; one of the thighs was also broken; but otherwise the fragment had not been trampled on. There is little reason to doubt,” continues Selous, “that the infuriated elephant must have pressed the unfortunate man down with his foot or knee, and then, twisting his trunk round his body, wrenched him asunder. This feat gives one an idea of the awful strength of these huge beasts, and how powerless the strongest of men.”
Sometimes the elephant is attacked with javelins, or spears, and so killed. Dr. Livingstone thus describes an instance that he witnessed:—
“I had retired from the noise, to take observations among some rocks of laminated grit, when I beheld an elephant and her calf at the end of a valley, about two miles distant. The calf was rolling in the mud, and the dam was fanning herself with her great ears. As I looked at them through my glass, I saw a long string of my own men approaching on the other side of them. I then went higher up the side of the valley, in order to have a distinct view of their mode of hunting. The goodly beast, totally unconscious of the approach of an enemy, stood for some time suckling her young one, which seemed about two years old: then they went into a pit containing mud, and smeared themselves all over with it; the little one frisking about his dam, flapping his ears, and tossing his trunk incessantly in elephantine fashion. She kept flapping her ears, and wagging her tail, as if in the height of enjoyment. Then began the piping of her enemies, which was performed by blowing into a tube, or the hands closed together, as boys do into a key. They called out, to attract the animal’s attention,—
‘O chief, chief! we have come to kill you:
O chief, chief! many others will die beside you;