We went for our canoe, and after descending the river we saw the big bull elephant stranded. What a huge beast he was! He had two enormous tusks, but, as was always the case, they were not of the same length and weight.
We left the bull, and went into the forest in search of the two cow elephants, for Rogala and Shinshooko were sure that they had wounded them and that they had probably died in the forest not far from the place where they were shot.
We had landed where we had seen them leave the river, and saw some blood on the ground. Following their tracks, we came to a dead cow elephant.
"Let us go after the other one," said the two men.
In the meantime they had reloaded their guns. We followed the track the other cow elephant had left behind. After a short time we came up with her, seated apparently on her knees. As soon as she saw us she got up to charge, but she had not gone five steps when she fell dead.
Then we went back to the plantation, and the following day all, including the women, returned with axes and baskets to get the tusks, and as much of the meat as we could.
The huge tusks of the bull were imbedded in his head over thirty-one inches, so there were only about four feet of the tusk outside. He was ten feet in height, and had fine big ears. The hair on his tail was long and coarse. One of his tusks weighed sixty-nine pounds, the other sixty-two. The tusks of the cow elephants were smaller, the biggest not weighing more than twenty-nine pounds.
Rogala, Shinshooko, and Alapai danced round the elephants and cut their tails off, to add to the number they had. Then we made for the plantation with all the meat our canoes could carry. A big platform was built to smoke the meat. We fed on elephant meat for a time, but it was far from being as good as monkey flesh.