We had slipped, and plunged, and struggled over this distance, when we
suddenly were checked in our advance. We had entered a small plot of
deep mud and rank grass, surrounded upon all sides by dense rattan
jungle. This stuff is one woven mass of hooked thorns: long tendrils,
armed in the same manner, although not thicker than a whip-cord, wind
themselves round the parent canes and form a jungle which even elephants
dislike to enter. To man, these jungles are perfectly impervious.
Half-way to our knees in mud, we stood in this small open space of about
thirty feet by twenty. Around us was an opaque screen of impenetrable
jungle; the lake lay about fifty yards upon our left, behind the thick
rattan. The gun-bearers were gone ahead somewhere, and were far in
advance. We were at a stand-still. Leaning upon my long rifle, I stood
within four feet of the wall of jungle which divided us from the lake. I
said to B., 'The trackers are all wrong, and have gone too far. I am
convinced that the elephants must have entered somewhere near this
place.'
Little did I think that at that very moment they were within a few feet
of us. B. was standing behind me on the opposite side of the small open,
or about seven yards from the jungle.
I suddenly heard a deep guttural sound in the thick rattan within four
feet of me; in the same instant the whole tangled fabric bent forward,
and bursting asunder, showed the furious head of an elephant with
uplifted trunk in full charge upon me!
I had barely time to cock my rifle, and the barrel almost touched him as
I fired. I knew it was in vain, as his trunk was raised. B. fired his
right-hand barrel at the same moment without effect from the same cause.
I jumped on one side and attempted to spring through the deep mud: it
was of no use, the long grass entangled my feet, and in another instant
I lay sprawling in the enraged elephant's path within a foot of him. In
that moment of suspense I expected to hear the crack of my own bones as
his massive foot would be upon me. It was an atom of time. I heard the
crack of a gun; it was B.'s last barrel. I felt a spongy weight strike
my heel, and, turning quickly heels over head, I rolled a few paces and
regained my feet. That last shot had floored him just as he was upon me;
the end of his trunk had fallen upon my heel. Still he was not dead, but
he struck at me with his trunk as I passed round his head to give him a
finisher with the four-ounce rifle, which I had snatched from our
solitary gun-bearer.
My back was touching the jungle from which the rogue had just charged,
and I was almost in the act of firing through the temple of the still
struggling elephant, when I heard a tremendous crash in the jungle
behind me similar to the first, and the savage scream of an elephant. I
saw the ponderous foreleg cleave its way through the jungle directly
upon me. I threw my whole weight back against the thick rattans to avoid
him, and the next moment his foot was planted within an inch of mine.
His lofty head was passing over me in full charge at B., who was
unloaded, when, holding the four-ounce rifle perpendicularly, I fired
exactly under his throat. I thought he would fall and crush me, but this
shot was the only chance, as B. was perfectly helpless.
A dense cloud of smoke from the heavy charge of powder for the moment
obscured everything. I had jumped out of the way the instant after
firing. The elephant did not fall, but he had his death blow the ball
had severed his jugular, and the blood poured from the wound. He
stopped, but collecting his stunned energies he still blundered forward
towards B. He, however, avoided him by running to one side, and the
wounded brute staggered on through the jungle. We now loaded the guns;
the first rogue was quite dead, and we followed in pursuit of rogue
number two. We heard distant shots, and upon arriving at the spot we
found the gun-bearers. They had heard the wounded elephant crushing
through the jungle, and they had given him a volley just as he was
crossing the river over which the herd had escaped in the morning. They
described the elephant as perfectly helpless from his wound, and they
imagined that he had fallen in the thick bushes on the opposite bank of
the river. As I before mentioned, we could not cross the river on
account of the torrent, but in a few days it subsided, and the elephant
was found lying dead in the spot where they supposed he had fallen.
Thus happily ended the destruction of this notable pair; they had proved
themselves all that we had heard of them, and by their cunning dodge of
hiding in the thick jungle they had nearly made sure of us. We had
killed three rogues that morning, and we returned to our quarters well
satisfied.
Since that period I have somewhat thinned the number of rogues in this
neighbourhood. I had a careful and almost certain plan of shooting them.
Quite alone, with the exception of two faithful gun-bearers, I used to
wait at the edge of the jungle at their feeding time, and watch their
exit from the forest.
