“Having taken stock of the position, my next step was to make arrangements for the fray.  The three bulls, according to the natives, had been spoored into the dense patch of bush above the kloof.  Now it seemed to me very probable that they would return to-night to feed on the remainder of the ripening mealies.  If so, there was a bright moon, and it struck me that by the exercise of a little ingenuity I might bag one or more of them without exposing myself to any risk, which, having the highest respect for the aggressive powers of bull elephants, was a great consideration to me.

“This then was my plan.  To the right of the huts as you look up the kloof, and commanding the mealie lands, stands the baobab tree that I have mentioned.  Into that baobab tree I made up my mind to go.  Then if the elephants appeared I should get a shot at them.  I announced my intentions to the head man of the kraal, who was delighted.  ‘Now,’ he said, ’his people might sleep in peace, for while the mighty white hunter sat aloft like a spirit watching over the welfare of his kraal what was there to fear?’

“I told him that he was an ungrateful brute to think of sleeping in peace while, perched like a wounded vulture on a tree, I watched for his welfare in wakeful sorrow; and once more he collapsed, and owned that my words were ‘sharp but just.’

“However, as I have said, confidence was completely restored; and that evening everybody in the kraal, including the superannuated victim of jealousy in the little hut where the mealie cobs were stored, went to bed with a sense of sweet security from elephants and all other animals that prowl by night.

“For my part, I pitched my camp below the kraal; and then, having procured a beam of wood from the head man—­rather a rotten one, by the way—­I set it across two boughs that ran out laterally from the baobab tree, at a height of about twenty-five feet from the ground, in such fashion that I and another man could sit upon it with our legs hanging down, and rest our backs against the bole of the tree.  This done I went back to the camp and ate my supper.  About nine o’clock, half-an-hour before the moon-rise, I summoned Gobo, who, thinking that he had seen about enough of the delights of big game hunting for that day, did not altogether relish the job; and, despite his remonstrances, gave him my eight-bore to carry, I having the .570-express.  Then we set out for the tree.  It was very dark, but we found it without difficulty, though climbing it was a more complicated matter.  However, at last we got up and sat down, like two little boys on a form that is too high for them, and waited.  I did not dare to smoke, because I remembered the rhinoceros, and feared that the elephants might wind the tobacco if they should come my way, and this made the business more wearisome, so I fell to thinking and wondering at the completeness of the silence.