This cooling application of water had the effect of making the injured man open his eyes, and reply to the eager inquiries of his sons.
“Only a bit stunned, my boys, and a few cuts,” he said. “It is a mercy I was not killed.”
“What a bad rifle!” exclaimed Jack indignantly, as he helped his father to rise.
“What a bad sportsman, you should say, my boy,” replied his father, whose face now looked less pallid. “I ought to have known better. My rifle must have been plugged with mud from my fall, and I did not examine it first. That would burst the best gun ever made.”
He found he could walk without assistance, and after kneeling down by a pool that had been left unsullied by the elephants, and having a good drink and bathe at his wounds, he rose up refreshed, and turned with the boys to see what was the result of their shots.
Better than they had expected. Two elephants were badly wounded, and Chicory had marked them down in a clump of trees half a mile away.
It required caution now to approach them, for the beasts would probably be furious; but by skilful management they were staked, and the boys, after two or three shots a-piece, succeeded in laying the monsters low, each falling over upon its side with a terrible crash.
The General soon hacked out the good-sized tusks, and these were borne to the grove where the horses had been left to graze.
“It never rains but it pours,” said Mr Rogers quietly, as he slapped the flanks and neck of his horse rapidly. “Quick, boys, look at your own, and if they have nothing on them—no little flies something like house flies—take a tusk each, and ride back along the track as quick as you can go.”
The boys eagerly obeyed, and seeing no trace of flies, mounted, each with a tusk before him, and cantered away, Mr Rogers following more slowly with the bay and the Zulus—for the mischief was done; the terrible tsetse fly had attacked the fine old horse, and it was only a question of days or weeks before the poison would have finished its work.