Half an hour before sunset two horsemen came racing over the plain from the Wagar direction, and poising their spears circled round us at full speed. They pulled up shouting “Mót!” (Hail!) and reported the latest tidings about the herd. I learned the melancholy news that it had got away in the night. My men, however, tried to comfort me by saying, “Insh’ Allah Bukera” (Please God, to-morrow). We camped at an empty zeríba in a strip of bush near Soksodi, where there was firewood and water, intending to search for the elephants next day. We lit a roaring fire and threw ourselves down on the sand to sleep. At dawn, while my men were preparing coffee, I took a stroll round camp, and saw by several broad footprints in the sand that a large lion had been prowling round our bivouac all night Later on my men pointed out old tracks of elephants, broken branches, and aloe clumps, indicating the course of a herd which must have passed two or three days before. I sent all the men into the covert to look for fresh tracks, but at noon they returned unsuccessful.
At two in the afternoon some shepherds came to water a flock of sheep on their way to the Berbera market, and they said that they had passed a herd of elephants only an hour ago in a valley to the south. On my asking for a guide they refused, hoping to get me to pay heavily for their information, so I shouldered my double four-bore rifle and started with the two Midgán trackers on the back trail of the sheep, hoping to find the elephants without a guide. The path led past two small sandstone hills, and we then entered a sloping valley, down the centre of which ran a sand-river bordered by dense jungle. Heavy masses of armo creeper draped the branches of the trees, and as we advanced fragments of creeper, which had evidently been torn down by the elephants, lay across our path.
We soon came to the fresh tracks of a herd which must have passed early in the day, and the Midgáns began to follow the footprints with great interest. The signs became every moment more distinct; at one spot the elephants had taken a long halt, rolling in the sand; and after half an hour’s tracking we found evidences that we were quite close to them. Sitting down with one of the Midgáns, I sent the other up a small hill to look around; he soon returned, whispering “Maródi, Maródi!” (elephants). Having joined us, he shaded his eyes to have another look, and then stretching out his hand, he pointed to two reddish brown spots among the lower branches of a clump of high trees on the farther side of a glade. As we looked six large elephants and four calves walked solemnly by twos or in single file out into the open. Even in this moment of excitement, for I had never seen a wild elephant before, I noticed the huge ears of the African species, the high fore-quarters and quick, active pace, and a beautiful sight it was! Swinging their heads from side to side, they crossed the glade and entered a clump of trees. Here they stopped and began feeding about, the swaying and snapping of the branches, and the peculiar low rumbling which they give out when feeding, indicating where they stood, though we could not see them.
The Midgáns, who were new to the work of attacking elephants on foot, did not quite like the prospect of going with me into the middle of the herd, so taking the four-bore, and telling them to watch from a low hill, I began creeping into the jungle alone. In thick forests the chief difficulty of elephant hunting consists in picking out the one with the best tusks, and then getting close up to it without being winded or seen by the others.
I threw up some sand to try the direction of the wind, and then advanced very silently for a hundred yards into the thickest jungle. I heard the rustle of some creepers in front of me, and then peeping through the underwood I saw three elephants fanning themselves with their ears under a very large camel-thorn-tree, whose branches rose to a flat fan shape high above their heads. It was from this thorn-tree that one of them had just been pulling down the creepers. From my left came the rumbling sound made by a fourth elephant, but I could see nothing there. I had on entering the jungle unconsciously walked into the very centre of the herd, and there was now no time to be lost in making my choice, because one of them might at any moment get down wind of me and sound the alarm.
The elephants I had seen were standing about forty yards away, one being a little apart from the other two, close to a tree, and I could see that a pair of tusks protruded from its lips. I advanced to within fifteen yards of the foremost one, which looked quietly at me for some moments, its trunk feeling the wind, as if wondering whether I might or might not be the stump of a tree. Raising my rifle I fired at the centre of the temple, half-way between the eye and the ear. The smoke obscured my view, but I the next instant could hear the jungle stirring all round me as the elephants made off. Then every living thing seemed to have left the place. As the smoke cleared away it disclosed, fifteen yards off, the body of the elephant sitting motionless with its knees tucked under its chest, a single hole in the temple showing where the bullet had entered. This turned out to be the largest cow in the herd, and I afterwards found, by a thorough examination of the tracks in the neighbourhood, that there was not a single bull.