At last we convinced him, although I don’t remember how, for he was obstinate from the aftermath of whisky, that we would no more permit him to go alone than he would consider abandoning his cattle.  Then we had to decide who should follow with our string of porters, for if forced marching was in order it was obvious that we should far outdistance our train.

We invited Brown to follow with all the men while we three skirmished ahead, but he waxed so apoplectically blasphemous at the very thought of it that Fred assured him the proposal was intended for a joke.  Then we argued among ourselves, coaxed, blarneyed, persuaded, and tried to bribe one another.  Finally, all else failing, we tossed a coin for it, odd man out, and Fred lost.

So Brown, Will Yerkes and I, with Kazimoto, our two personal servants, and six boys to carry one tent for the lot of us and food and cooking pots, started off just as the moon rose over the nearest cedars, and laughed at Fred marshaling the sleepy porters by lamplight in the open space between the house and barn.  He was to follow as fast as the loaded porters could be made to travel, and with that concertina of his to spur them on there was little likelihood of losing touch.  But the rear-guard, when it comes to pursuing a retreating enemy, is ever the least alluring place.

“You’ve got all the luck,” he shouted.  “Make the most of it or I’ll never gamble on the fall of a coin again!”

That pursuit was a journey of accidents, chapter after chapter of them in such close sequence that the whole was a nightmare without let-up or reason.  I began the book by falling into an elephant pit.

Before we had gone a mile in the dark we stood in doubt as to whether the most practicable trail went right or left.  Brown set his own indecision down frankly to the whisky that had muddled him.  Even Kazimoto, who had passed that way three times, did not know for certain.  So I went forward to scout—­stepped into the deep shadow of some jungle—­trod on nothing—­threw the other foot forward to save myself—­and fell downward into blackness for an eternity.

I brought up at last unhurt in the trash and decaying vegetation at the bottom of a pit, and looked up to see the stars in a rough parallelogram above me, whose edge I guessed was more than thirty feet above my head.  I started to dig my way out, but the crumbling sides fell in and threatened to bury me alive unless I kept still.  So I shouted until my lungs ached, but without result.  I suppose the noise went trumpeting upward out of the hole and away to the clouds and the stars.  At any rate, Will and Brown swore afterward they never heard it.

I was fifteen minutes in the hole that very likely had held many an elephant with his legs wedged together under him until the poor brute perished of thirst, before it occurred to me to fire my rifle.  I fired several shots when I did think of it; but we had agreed on no system of signals, and instead of coming to find me at once, the other two cursed me for wasting time shooting at leopards in the dark instead of scouting for the track.  I used twenty cartridges before they came to see what sort of battle I was waging, and with the last shot I nearly blew Brown’s helmet off as he stooped over the hole to look down in.