CHAPTER IX
THE COLONEL READS MACAULAY'S "ESSAYS," DISCOURSES ON MANY SUBJECTS WITH GREAT FRANKNESS, DECLINES A DRINK OF SCOTCH WHISKY, AND KILLS THREE ELEPHANTS
On the afternoon of November fourteenth, a little cavalcade of horsemen might have been seen riding slowly away from our camp on the Nzoia River. One of them, evidently the leader, was a well-built man of about fifty-one years, tanned by many months of African hunting and wearing a pair of large spectacles. His teeth flashed in the warm sunlight. A rough hunting shirt encased his well-knit body and a pair of rougher trousers, reinforced with leather knee caps and jointly sustained by suspenders and a belt, fitted in loose folds around his stocky legs. On his head was a big sun helmet, and around his waist, less generous in amplitude than formerly, was a partly filled belt of Winchester cartridges. His horse was a stout little Abyssinian shooting pony, gray of color and lean in build, and in the blood-stained saddle-bag was a well-worn copy of Macaulay's Essays, bound in pigskin. Our hero—for it was he—was none other than Bwana Tumbo, the hunter-naturalist, exponent of the strenuous life, and ex-president of the United States.
Improving Each Shining Hour
If I were writing a thrilling story of adventure that is the way this story would begin. But as this is designed to be a simple chronicle of events, it is just as well at once to get down to basic facts and tell about the Roosevelt elephant hunt, the hyena episode, and the pigskin library, together with other more or less extraneous matter.
A Flag Flew Over the Colonel's Tent
Kermit and Mr. Stephenson Diagnosing the Case