A Few Moments After, We Heard The Report Of The
Gun, And We Saw The Ball Splash In The Water
Close to the elephants.
They immediately cocked their ears, and, throwing their trunks high in
the air, they endeavoured to
Wind the enemy; but they did not move, and
they shortly again commenced feeding upon the water-lilies. Another shot
from the same place once more disturbed them, and, while they winded the
unseen enemy, two more shots in quick succession from the old quarter
decided their opinion, and they stalked proudly through the water
towards the shore.
Our satisfaction was great, but the delight of the elephant-catchers
knew no bounds. Away they, started along the shores of the lake, hopping
from root to root, skipping through the mud, which was more than a foot
deep, their light forms hardly sinking in the tough surface. A
nine-stone man certainly has an advantage over one of twelve in this
ground; added to this, I was carrying the long two-ounce rifle of
sixteen pounds, which, with ammunition, &c., made up about thirteen and
a half stone, in deep stiff clay. I was literally half-way up the calf
of my leg in mud at every step, while these light, naked fellows tripped
like snipe over the sodden ground. Vainly I called upon them to go
easily; their moment of excitement was at its full pitch, and they were
soon out of sight among the trees and underwood, taking all the spare
guns, except the four-ounce rifle, which, weighing twenty-one pounds,
effectually prevented the bearer from leaving us behind,
What added materially to the annoyance of losing the spare guns was the
thoughtless character of the advance. I felt sure that these fellows
would outrun the position of the elephants, which, if they had continued
in a direct route, should have entered the jungle within 300 yards of
our first station.
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.
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