Hans was quite right about the Black Kendah.  They cleared out, probably in search of food, where I do not know and I do not care, though whether this were a temporary or permanent move on their part remains, and so far as I am concerned is likely to remain, veiled in obscurity.  They were great blackguards, though extraordinarily fine soldiers, and what became of them is a matter of complete indifference to me.  One thing is certain, however, a very large percentage of them never migrated at all, for something over three thousand of their bodies did our people have to bury in the pass and about the temple, a purpose for which all the pits and trenches we had dug came in very useful.  Our loss, by the way, was five hundred and three, including those who died of wounds.  It was a great fight and, except for those who perished in the pitfalls during the first rush, all practically hand to hand.

Jana we interred where he fell because we could not move him, within a few feet of the body of his slayer Hans.  I have always regretted that I did not take the exact measurements of this brute, as I believe the record elephant of the world, but I had no time to do so and no rule or tape at hand.  I only saw him for a minute on the following morning, just as he was being tumbled into a huge hole, together with the remains of his master, Simba the King.  I found, however, that the sole wounds upon him, save some cuts and scratches from spears, were those inflicted by Hans—­namely, the loss of one eye, the puncture through the skin over the heart made when he shot at him for the second time with the little rifle Intombi, and two neat holes at the back of the mouth through which the bullets from the elephant gun had driven upwards to the base of the brain, causing his death from haemorrhage on that organ.

I asked the White Kendah to give me his two enormous tusks, unequalled, I suppose, in size and weight in Africa, although one was deformed and broken.  But they refused.  These, I presume, they wished to keep, together with the chains off his breast and trunk, as mementoes of their victory over the god of their foes.  At any rate they hewed the former out with axes and removed the latter before tumbling the carcass into the grave.  From the worn-down state of the teeth I concluded that this beast must have been extraordinarily old, how old it is impossible to say.

That is all I have to tell of Jana.  May he rest in peace, which certainly he will not do if Hans dwells anywhere in his neighbourhood, in the region which the old boy used to call that of the “fires that do not go out.”  Because of my horrible failure in connection with this beast, the very memory of which humiliates me, I do not like to think of it more than I can help.