The little elephant seemed very content to be in the water now, and he splashed and spluttered as much as his father and mother. In a mischievous moment, the baby sucked up a great trunkful of water and blew it full in his father’s face. Astonished and irritated, the bull elephant rushed at his disrespectful offspring. He pushed him into such deep water that he lost his foothold.
Frightened, the little elephant lifted his short trunk into the air and trumpeted frantically while he swam to shallower water. At last he scrambled safely to shore. He had learned how to behave toward his father.
The hunters moved on until they were far from the river scene. Then they stopped to eat.
They rested for a while; then Zitu rose. “We must be on our way. We are in the neighborhood of elephants, and I do not want to spend the night in their midst without locating some with good tusks.”
After they had walked for some distance, Zitu stood still, listening. The men stopped, waiting for their chief’s decision. In the dismal hush different calls of forest birds could be heard, mingled with an occasional howl from some animal. Then faintly there came to their ears the sound of low rumblings and gurglings. Nomusa pointed urgently in the direction from which the sound had come. Her father nodded, now smiling. He had heard too, and so had all the others.
Very, very carefully they moved in the direction of the sound, weapons ready. While they crept closer, stopping from time to time in order to keep away from the wind side, Zabala’s arm suddenly waved up and down in a frenzy as he saw something moving between two tall trees. A large ear could be seen flapping slowly. Yo! They had come upon a herd of elephants feeding. The hunters stood stock-still, their eyes wide with excitement.
When Zitu decided which elephants they would attack, he pointed out to each of his men what position to take. Nomusa wormed her way forward after Zabala and Damasi. She peeped through the screen of leaves to see the enormous creatures whose ears seemed to flap among the topmost branches of the trees.
Eight elephants were in the clearing, three of them bulls, four cow elephants, and one baby elephant, a very small one indeed. Nomusa drew back stealthily and held up eight fingers to show her father how many elephants she had seen. The hunters nodded their heads, well pleased with the information.
Zitu crept forward and peered through the bushes. He had to find out which elephants had the best tusks. Nomusa looked again when her father did, and now she saw a sight that delighted her. The baby elephant was under her mother, trying to suck some milk from her while the mother was grazing. The mother elephant kept pushing the little one out from under her, but her persistent baby would not stay away.
It amazed Nomusa to see the size of the bulls. They were huge, bigger than anything she had ever seen. While they ate, their stomachs rumbled, and they slobbered with their mouths and ground their teeth. None of the beasts ever seemed to stand still. They were constantly moving and shifting their feet, flapping their great ears.