As soon as Swartboy recovered the control over his tongue, he ejaculated in a hurried whisper:—
“Pas op! (take care!) baas Bloom,—hab good care—don’t go near um—he da skellum ole klow. My footy! he wicked!—I know de ole bull duyvel.”
By this volley of queer phrases, Swartboy meant to caution his master against rashly approaching the elephant, as he knew him to be one of the wicked sort—in short, a “rogue.”
How Swartboy knew this would appear a mystery, as there were no particular marks about the animal to distinguish him from others of his kind. But the Bushman, with his practised eye, saw something in the general physiognomy of the elephant—just as one may distinguish a fierce and dangerous bull from those of milder disposition, or a bad from a virtuous man, by some expression that one cannot define.
Von Bloom himself, and even Hendrik, saw that the elephant had a fierce and ruffian look.
They did not stand in need of Swartboy’s advice to act with caution.
They remained for some minutes, gazing through the bushes at the huge quadruped. The more they gazed, the more they became resolved to make an attack upon him. The sight of his long tusks was too tempting to Von Bloom, to admit for a moment the thought of letting him escape without a fight. A couple of bullets he should have into him, at all events; and if opportunity offered, a good many more, should these not be sufficient. Von Bloom would not relinquish those fine tusks without a struggle.
He at once set about considering the safest mode of attack; but was not allowed time to mature any plan. The elephant appeared to be restless, and was evidently about to move forward. He might be off in a moment, and carry them after him for miles, or, perhaps, in the thick cover of wait-a-bits get lost to them altogether.
These conjectures caused Von Bloom to decide at once upon beginning the attack, and without any other plan than to stalk in as near as would be safe, and deliver his fire. He had heard that a single bullet in the forehead would kill any elephant; and if he could only get in such a position as to have a fair shot at the animal’s front, he believed he was marksman enough to plant his bullet in the right place.
He was mistaken as to killing an elephant with a shot in the forehead. That is a notion of gentlemen who have hunted the elephant in their closets, though other closet gentlemen the anatomists—to whom give all due credit—have shown the thing to be impossible, from the peculiar structure of the elephant’s skull and the position of his brain.