“But in escaping from Scylla I had run into the jaws of Charybdis.  I heard the elephant fall, and glanced round.  Straight in front of me, and not fifteen paces away, were the other two bulls.  They were staring about, and at that moment they caught sight of me.  Then they came, the pair of them—­came like thunderbolts, and from different angles.  I had only time to snap my rifle to, lift it, and fire, almost at haphazard, at the head of the nearest, the unwounded bull.

“Now, as you know, in the case of the African elephant, whose skull is convex, and not concave like that of the Indian, this is always a most risky and very frequently a perfectly useless shot.  The bullet loses itself in the masses of bone, that is all.  But there is one little vital place, and should the bullet happen to strike there, it will follow the channel of the nostrils—­at least I suppose it is that of the nostrils—­and reach the brain.  And this was what happened in the present case—­the ball struck the fatal spot in the region of the eye and travelled to the brain.  Down came the great bull all of a heap, and rolled on to his side as dead as a stone.  I swung round at that instant to face the third, the monster bull with one tusk that I had wounded two days before.  He was already almost over me, and in the dim moonlight seemed to tower above me like a house.  I lifted the rifle and pulled at his neck.  It would not go off!  Then, in a flash, as it were, I remembered that it was on the half-cock.  The lock of this barrel was a little weak, and a few days before, in firing at a cow eland, the left barrel had jarred off at the shock of the discharge of the right, knocking me backwards with the recoil; so after that I had kept it on the half-cock till I actually wanted to fire it.

“I gave one desperate bound to the right, and, my lame leg notwithstanding, I believe that few men could have made a better jump.  At any rate, it was none too soon, for as I jumped I felt the wind made by the tremendous downward stroke of the monster’s trunk.  Then I ran for it.

“I ran like a buck, still keeping hold of my gun, however.  My idea, so far as I could be said to have any fixed idea, was to bolt down the pathway up which I had come, like a rabbit down a burrow, trusting that he would lose sight of me in the uncertain light.  I sped across the glade.  Fortunately the bull, being wounded, could not go full speed; but wounded or no, he could go quite as fast as I could.  I was unable to gain an inch, and away we went, with just about three feet between our separate extremities.  We were at the other side now, and a glance served to show me that I had miscalculated and overshot the opening.  To reach it now was hopeless; I should have blundered straight into the elephant.  So I did the only thing I could do:  I swerved like a course hare, and started off round the edge of the glade, seeking for some opening into which I could plunge.  This gave me a moment’s start, for the bull could not turn as quickly as I could, and I made the most of it.  But no opening could I see; the bush was like a wall.  We were speeding round the edge of the glade, and the elephant was coming up again.  Now he was within about six feet, and now, as he trumpeted or rather screamed, I could feel the fierce hot blast of his breath strike upon my head.  Heavens! how it frightened me!