“I argued with them, and affected to be much put out.  The elephants were close at hand, I said; I was sure of it; I had heard them trumpet in the night.

“‘Yes,’ answered the men mysteriously, ’they too had heard things in the night, things not nice to hear; they had heard the spooks out shooting, and no longer would they remain in a country so vilely haunted.’

“‘It was nonsense,’ I replied.  ’If ghosts went out shooting, surely they would use air-guns and not black powder, and one would not hear an air-gun.  Well, if they were cowards, and would not come, of course I could not force them to, but I would make a bargain with them.  They should follow those elephants for one half-hour more, then if we failed to come upon them I would abandon the pursuit, and we would go straight to Wambe, chief of the Matuku, and give him hongo.’

“To this compromise the men agreed readily.  Accordingly about half-an-hour later we struck our camp and started, and notwithstanding my aches and bruises, I do not think that I ever felt in better spirits in my life.  It is something to wake up in the morning and remember that in the dead of the night, single-handed, one has given battle to and overthrown three of the largest elephants in Africa, slaying them with three bullets.  Such a feat to my knowledge had never been done before, and on that particular morning I felt a very ‘tall man of my hands’ indeed.  The only thing I feared was, that should I ever come to tell the story nobody would believe it, for when a strange tale is told by a hunter, people are apt to think it is necessarily a lie, instead of being only probably so.[*]

[*] For the satisfaction of any who may be so disbelieving as to take this view of Mr. Quatermain’s story, the Editor may state that a gentleman with whom he is acquainted, and whose veracity he believes to be beyond doubt, not long ago described to him how he chanced to kill four African elephants with four consecutive bullets.  Two of these elephants were charging him simultaneously, and out of the four three were killed with the head shot, a very uncommon thing in the case of the African elephant.—­Editor.

“Well, we passed on till, having crossed the first glade where I had seen the lions, we reached the neck of bush that separated it from the second glade, where the dead elephants were.  And here I began to take elaborate precautions, amongst others ordering Gobo to keep some yards ahead and look out sharp, as I thought that the elephants might be about.  He obeyed my instructions with a superior smile, and pushed ahead.  Presently I saw him pull up as though he had been shot, and begin to snap his fingers faintly.

“‘What is it?’ I whispered.

“‘The elephant, the great elephant with one tusk kneeling down.’

“I crept up beside him.  There knelt the bull as I had left him last night, and there too lay the other bulls.