We followed the herd.  Its track was wide, and easier than the winding native foot-paths; and we were willing enough to jettison loads of trade-goods if only we could replace them with tusks.  The chase led up toward Elgon, over the shoulder of an outlying spur, and upward toward the mountain’s eastern slopes.

As long as we kept in the wake of the herd the going presented no difficulties.  We knew by the state of the tracks and the dung that the herd was never far ahead.  Frequently we heard them crashing through trees in front of us.  Yet whenever we came so close as to hope for a view, and a shot at a tusker, invariably a regular fusillade from the eastward to our rear would start the herd stampeding with a din like all the avalanches.

Streams by the dozen flowed down from the mountain’s sides, their banks crushed into bog where the elephants had crossed.  Our donkeys grew used to being tied by the head in line and hauled across (for in common with all herds of donkeys, there were a few of them that swam readily, and many that either could not or refused).  The flies in the wake of the elephants were worse than the tetse that haunted the shore of Nyanza.

We had no trouble now from our boys.  We could even let the Baganda’s hands loose.  They feared the cannibals of the higher slopes, but were much more afraid of the madman to our right rear.  Our difficulty lay in compelling them to keep a course sufficiently to eastward, and in calling a halt each day before men and animals were too utterly tired out.  Yet for all their hurry, we did not gain on the man who made them so afraid.

Elephants, once thoroughly seared, will ran away forever.  Our boys openly praised the herd in front for its speed and stamina, hoping it would continue on its course and oblige us to keep the madman with the rifle at a safe distance to our rear.  But it seemed he had an easier line than we, or else his frenzy gave him seven-league boots, for he even began to gain on us, keeping along our right flank at a distance of several miles, and driving us nearly mad in the frantic effort to keep our column from turning and running away to the westward.  If we had relaxed our vigilance for a moment they would have broken line and fled.

It was old volcanic country we were marching through, densely wooded, virgin forest for the most part, with earth so warm at times that it was not easy to believe the crater of Elgon quite extinct.  Even at that low level we came on blow-holes nearly filled in with dirt and trash, serving as fine caves for beasts of prey.  We went into one for about three hundred paces before it narrowed into nothing, and would have camped in it but for the stink.  It smelt like a place where the egg of original sin had turned rotten.  Fred said that was sulphur, with the air of a man who would like it believed that he knew.

At last the enemy must have made a night march, for he passed us, and the following dawn we heard him shooting to our right in front.  That morning it was simply impossible to make the boys break camp.  They swore that the ghost of Schillingschen had gone in league with the elephants to destroy us, and they preferred to be shot by us rather than murdered by witchcraft.