I Arose Early In The Next Morning, Having Been Promised By The Abbans
Grand Sport In The Harawwah Valley.
The Somal had already divided the
elephants' spoils:
They were to claim the hero's feather, I was to receive
two thirds of the ivory--nothing remained to be done but the killing.
After sundry pretences and prayers for delay, Beuh saddled his hack, the
Hammal mounted one mule, a stout-hearted Bedouin called Fahi took a
second, and we started to find the herds. The End of Time lagged in the
rear: the reflection that a mule cannot outrun an elephant, made him look
so ineffably miserable, that I sent him back to the kraal. "Dost thou
believe me to be a coward, 0 Pilgrim?" thereupon exclaimed the Mullah,
waxing bold in the very joy of his heart. "Of a truth I do!" was my reply.
Nothing abashed, he hammered his mule with heel, and departed ejaculating,
"What hath man but a single life? and he who throweth it away, what is he
but a fool?" Then we advanced with cocked guns, Beuh singing, Boanerges-
like, the Song of the Elephant.
In the Somali country, as amongst the Kafirs, after murdering a man or
boy, the death of an elephant is considered _the_ act of heroism: most
tribes wear for it the hair-feather and the ivory bracelet. Some hunters,
like the Bushmen of the Cape [30], kill the Titan of the forests with
barbed darts carrying Waba-poison. The general way of hunting resembles
that of the Abyssinian Agageers described by Bruce.
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