CHAPTER XIII.
HARRY'S SHOT—HIS TRACKER'S PREDICAMENT—AFTER
HIPPOPOTAMI—ELEPHANTS AGAIN.
Harry concluded to wait; and, sure enough, the elephant came back, as the tracker predicted. He paused again at the edge of the forest, and then came out and proceeded at a rapid walk along the path.
Harry raised his rifle and fired at the vulnerable spot, just between the eye and ear. He wounded the elephant, but did not bring him down, and then the animal turned and charged upon him, elevating his trunk and giving a vicious roar as he ran upon his antagonist.
Harry took advantage of the tree in the same way that I had done; and, according to his account, his antics were very much like mine, which the reader already knows about. The tracker climbed into the limbs of a small tree close by, thinking that there would be a place of safety. The elephant saw him ascending the tree, and abandoned the chase for Harry, in the hope of capturing the tracker.
He got under the tracker's tree just as the latter was a foot or so beyond the reaching-point. Had the elephant been five seconds earlier he could have seized the tracker with his trunk and dragged him to the ground. Failing in this, he determined to shake the man down.
Stepping back eight or ten feet, the brute ran at the tree with the force of a battering-ram. The tracker—a lithe and active Kafir—knew that his safety and life depended upon clinging to the tree, and he hung to it, as the sailors say, "enough to squeeze the tar out of the rigging."
Three times the elephant butted at that tree, and while he was doing so Harry was making a diversion on which the infuriated animal had not counted. With his rifle at full cock, and taking advantage of the shelter afforded by a few bushes, Harry crept around until he had the elephant broadside on and not more than twelve yards distant; he gave him a second and a third shot in his most vulnerable points. The animal abandoned his tree-shaking and started again in pursuit of Harry. He took only three or four steps, however, before pausing, trembling, and then falling dead to the ground.
Then we came around to where Jack had been stationed. He had also killed his elephant, but, unfortunately, the animal was a young one. It was a tusker, it is true, but the tusks were small, as was also the elephant.
"As for a story," said Jack, "I'm like the needy knife-grinder: I've none to tell. This little fellow came along, and I shot him; and that's all there is about it."
"Well, if that's all about it," said I, "we'll go back to camp and send the men out to bring in the tusks. It's a good morning's work all around, and we ought to be satisfied with it."