Hunters three: Sport and adventure in South Africa

by Thomas Wallace Knox

While we were at breakfast the next morning Mirogo came and announced some elephants off to the eastward, where the forest skirted a swamp extending to the river. He said they had been seen at the edge of the forest about daylight; there were a dozen or more of them, and some were large tuskers.

Breakfast was completed very quickly, and we were off in the direction of the elephants. We followed the same tactics as in some of the hunts already described, Harry and Jack taking opposite sides of the forest and I going among the trees to stir up the game.

Luck was on my side most emphatically, as I got a shot at a big tusker before I had been fifteen minutes away from my friends. I did not bring him down with my first bullet; he turned and charged me, and I had a lively race among the trees to escape him. His charge proved his ruin, as I dodged between two trees that were too near each other to enable him to get through; he was going at such a rapid rate that he fairly wedged himself between them. Seeing his predicament, I slipped around to one side and gave him a bullet at not more than five paces distance. That bullet was his death. He settled back on his haunches and fell prostrate on the ground. I fired another bullet into his head to make sure of him, but am satisfied that it was a waste of ammunition.

I stood motionless for several minutes, surveying my prize; and he was a prize, and no mistake! His tusks measured four feet nine and a half inches in length, each of them; and I have them now above my desk as I write. They have been greatly admired, and a high price has been offered for them, but I hope I may never be so hard up as to be compelled to sell these trophies of my hunting-experience.

I marked the spot, or rather took note of the position of certain tall trees near where the carcass of the elephant lay, and then started off in pursuit of the others. My tracker and gun-bearer had disappeared; exactly how far they ran I could not tell, but my first work was to summon them, which I did by blowing a whistle.

I whistled and waited; whistled and waited again and again before I was answered. First came the tracker and then the gun-bearer. I abused them roundly for having run away, though I really felt that their departure was not altogether unjustifiable under the circumstances. The elephant would have made no difference between white man and black, and he was not expected to draw a line between the man who carried the gun and the one who fired it. When I had talked myself out on that subject I asked Mirogo what had become of the other elephants.

"I think they've gone into the swamp, sir," was his reply; "I haven't heard a shot from the other gentlemen."

"Well, then, the thing for us to do is to go into the swamp and find them," I remarked. "Which way does it bear?"

Mirogo indicated the direction of the swamp and then led the way to it.

The forest was bad enough to walk in, but the swamp was worse; there were about the same vines and creepers in the swamp as in the forest, and then there was the further disadvantage that it was all cut up into little hillocks or islands, with mud-holes separating the islands from one another. The islands were of various sizes, from that of the top of a barrel up to the size of a respectable parlor; and the mud-holes between the islands were anywhere from two feet to a dozen wide. In going through these mud-holes we sank half-way to our knees—that is, if we went quickly; if we proceeded slowly we sank at least to our knees, if not deeper. Then, to add to the inconvenience, there were no trees in the swamp; at least, none large enough to afford shelter against an enraged elephant. There were some small trees, perhaps a foot in diameter, which a man could climb; but he needed the agility of a monkey to get away from his pursuer in case he got an elephant after him. I did not like that swamp a bit when we got into it, and if I had been alone I can say confidentially to the reader that I would have sneaked out and gone home. But my friends were waiting for me at the edge of the forest, and this was not a time to hesitate; I had a reputation to sustain.