The smoke hung about me, and for half a minute or so I could not see in any direction. That is a nuisance in shooting in an African forest, and especially in a swampy one. The air is so damp that the smoke does not quickly clear away, and the hunter is often left in doubt at a very critical moment.
And it was a critical moment in this case: the elephant fell to the ground as the result of my shot, and I felt that my prize was secure; but as the smoke cleared away he rose to his feet again, and charged directly toward where I stood. I do not think I was over fifty yards from him when I fired, and therefore he had but a short distance to come. He ran and I ran; but in the meantime I had got a fresh cartridge from my belt and shoved it into the gun. I kept my eye on a large tree a little to the right of my position, and made for that tree with the greatest speed of which I was capable, taking care to avoid catching my feet in any of the creeping vines. A man can easily dodge an elephant around a large tree; the animal is so bulky and unwieldy that he cannot turn and twist as rapidly as a man can, and in this respect the biped has the advantage over the quadruped.
I was almost paralyzed with astonishment—of course I will not say fear—when I saw the bulk of the creature I had shot at, and his immense tusks. I knew it was a case of life and death, and he was not likely to give up his pursuit of me in a hurry. At the same time I felt that I had planted the bullet in an effective spot, and could not altogether understand why he was up again after having fallen. But there was no chance for theorizing; he was up, certainly, and after me, and that is all there was about it.
ROUND AND ROUND THE TREE WE WENT.
Round and round the tree we went, perhaps half a dozen times. He had his mouth open and trunk uplifted, and I watched for a chance to give him another shot. Shooting was difficult under the circumstances; a man on a dead run around a tree is unable to aim a gun with any accuracy, and, furthermore, there are not many vulnerable points about an elephant, as I have already shown. The only thing I could do was to fire into his mouth, but that was not likely to do any good.
The French have a saying that it is the unexpected which always happens; so it was with me and the elephant.
Suddenly there came the sound of the trumpet-call of another elephant. My pursuer stopped an instant to listen, turning his head to one side. As he did so I gave him another bullet, directly in the spot where I sent the first one. He quivered, staggered for a moment, and fell, dead!