“Get close to them, bwana!  Go close!  Go close!  Wind coming our way—­smell coming our way—­noise coming our way—­elephant very busy eating—­no hurry!  No long shooting!  Go right up close!”

It was easier said than done.  The elephants had spread broadcast through the forest, and there was no longer one well-defined swath to follow, but a very great number of twisting narrow alleys through elastic undergrowth between great unyielding trees.  We had to separate, to gain any advantage from our number, so that we emerged into the open more than a hundred yards apart, with Fred at the far left and Will in the center.  Fred, with Kazimoto close at his heels, was more than fifty yards in front of either of us.

And crossing that mile of open land was no simple business.  It was a mass of rocks and tree-roots, burned over in some swift-running forest fire and not yet reseeded, nor yet rotted down.  There were winding ways all across it by the dozen that the elephants, with their greater height and better woodcraft, could follow on the run, but great stumps and rocks higher than a man’s head (that from a distance had looked like level land) blocked all vision and made progress mostly guesswork.

However, the latter half-mile was more like level going—­I emerged from between two boulders, wondering whether I could ever find my way back again, and envied Fred, who had found a better track and had the lead of me now by several hundred yards.  Will was as far behind him as I, but had gone over more to the left, leaving me—­feeling remarkably lonely—­away in the rear to the right.

Kazimoto followed Fred so closely, stooping low behind him, that the two looked like some strange four-legged beast.  They were headed for the forest in front of them at a great pace, increasing their lead from Will, who, like me, was more or less winded.  I stooped at a pool to scoop up water and splash my face and neck.  When I looked up a moment later I could see none of them.

At that instant, when I could actually smell the great brutes crashing in the forest, unseen within a hundred yards of me, and would have given all I had or hoped for just to have a friend within speaking distance, a shot rang out in the forest ahead, and rattled from tree to tree like the echo of a skirmish.  It was not from Fred’s gun, or Will’s.  It was the phantom rifleman at work again.  Schillingschen—­Schillingschen’s ghost—­or whoever he was, he could not have timed his fusillade better for our undoing.  The first shot was followed by six more in swift succession.  And then chaos broke loose.

Toward where I stood, from every angle to my front, the whole herd stampeded.  No human being could have guessed their number.  The forest awoke with a battle-din of falling trees and crashing undergrowth, split apart by the trumpeting of angry bulls and the screams of cows summoning their young ones.  The earth shook under the weight of their tremendous rout.  I heard Fred’s rifle ring out three times far to my left—­then Will’s a rifle nearer to me; and at that the herd swung toward its own left, and the whole lot of them came full-pelt, blind, screaming, frantic, straight for me.