“And what became of the tusks of the three bulls which you shot! You must have left them at Nala’s kraal, I suppose.”
The old gentleman’s face fell at this question.
“Ah,” he said, “that is a very sad story. Nala promised to send them with my goods to my agent at Delagoa, and so he did. But the men who brought them were unarmed, and, as it happened, they fell in with a slave caravan under the command of a half-bred Portuguese, who seized the tusks, and what is worse, swore that he had shot them. I paid him out afterwards, however,” he added with a smile of satisfaction, “but it did not give me back my tusks, which no doubt have been turned into hair brushes long ago;” and he sighed.
“Well,” said Good, “that is a capital yarn of yours, Quatermain, but——”
“But what?” he asked sharply, foreseeing a draw.
“But I don’t think that it was so good as mine about the ibex—it hasn’t the same finish.”
Mr. Quatermain made no reply. Good was beneath it.
“Do you know, gentlemen,” he said, “it is half-past two in the morning, and if we are going to shoot the big wood to-morrow we ought to leave here at nine-thirty sharp.”
“Oh, if you shoot for a hundred years you will never beat the record of those three woodcocks,” I said.
“Or of those three elephants,” added Sir Henry.