CHAPTER II.
SURPRISED—A WOMAN HUNTING ELEPHANTS—JACK'S HIPPOPOTAMUS.
Following my shot, with an interval of not more than two seconds, came the sound of another rifle, three or four hundred yards away. Then several elephants—I cannot say whether there were two or three, or twice that number—crashed away through the forest in different directions, and simultaneously with the crashing I heard the sound of other shots in the same direction as the first one.
"Surely Harry and Jack can't have turned back and got here as quickly as this?" I said to myself. "That must be some other hunter; but I don't know of any one in this neighborhood."
I shouted and blew my whistle, but received no audible response, except the firing of a rifle, which seemed to be discharged directly toward the sky. Then I went in the direction of the shot, occasionally blowing my whistle to indicate my whereabouts. Of course Mirogo and Kalil accompanied me.
When we had gone about three hundred yards we met a native tracker who was unknown to me, and also to both my servants. He had a few words with Mirogo, and it was evident that they understood each other. Mirogo turned to me and said there was another hunter who had shot an elephant, and was back in the forest a short distance.
"Very well," I said to Mirogo; "show me where he is and I'll make his acquaintance."
"He isn't a man," said Mirogo; "he's a woman!"
"What!" I exclaimed, "a woman hunting elephants?"
"That's what his tracker say," replied Mirogo; "his tracker say he's woman."
Well, here was romance with a vengeance: a woman shooting elephants in Africa, and we three men had not heard of her presence in the neighborhood! All the more reason why I should become acquainted with our rival. We certainly did not want to be in each other's way, and, moreover, if she was from any civilized land it would be a satisfaction to see and talk with her. The female society that one encounters in an African hunting-expedition is not usually of a kind to be enamoured of, as it consists almost entirely of native negroes, whose accomplishments in literature and the arts are not very marked. Furthermore, their style of beauty and habits of life do not render them at all attractive.