On Arrival At The End
We Heard That Elephants Had Been Seen Close By.
Grant and I then
prepared our guns, and found a herd of about a hundred feeding on
a plain of long grass, dotted here and there by small mounds
crowned with shrub.
The animals appeared to be all females, much
smaller than the Indian breed; yet though ten were fired at, none
were killed, and only one made an attempt to charge. I was with
the little twin Manua at the time, when, stealing along under
cover of the high grass, I got close to the batch and fired at
the larges, which sent her round roaring. The whole of them
then, greatly alarmed, packed together and began sniffing the air
with their uplifted trunks, till, ascertaining by the smell of
the powder that their enemy was in front of them, they rolled up
their trunks and came close to the spot where I was lying under a
mound. My scent then striking across them, they pulled up short,
lifted their heads high, and looked down sideways on us. This
was a bad job. I could not get a proper front shot at the boss
of any of them, and if I had waited an instant we should both
have been picked up or trodden to death; so I let fly at their
temples, and instead of killing, sent the whole of them rushing
away at a much faster pace than they came. After this I gave up,
because I never could separate the ones I had wounded from the
rest, and thought it cruel to go on damaging more.
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