e Watuta hunters. All the natives had denuded themselves entirely;
Selim and his two friends had but girded their cloths about their loins.

The natives thus deployed, and ready at a signal, moved forward
silently, and soon they were joined by the four remaining scouts, who,
ensconced behind the bushes, had continued to watch the elephants, who
were seen slaking their thirst at a pool, and playfully tossing the
water over their backs.

As the hunters emerged from this jungle into the cleared space near the
pool, the elephants turned short round to look at the strange intruders,
who were thus boldly appearing in their presence.

The hunters stopped also with one accord to survey the ponderous animals
they had come to kill. What a sight this was! Ten such noble beasts,
clothed with bluish-grey hides, with uplifted trunks, and great ears
standing out straight in array before those fifty naked pigmies, who,
had they not their sharp spears and their barbed arrows, would no more
have dared to approach these magnificent creatures than they would have
climbed up to the highest tree and jumped off, expecting to be able to
fly.

They stood thus a minute opposed to each other; then Kalulu advanced to
the front in the absence of the magic doctor, as the chief hunter, and
with uplifted spear in hand, chanted the death-song of the elephant he
chose should be killed. This was a picture also worthy of a great
artist--the warriors in the foreground, the slight and nude form of the
young chief in the centre, with his ostrich plumes waving above his
head, as his body oscillated from side to side while he sang; and
fronting him, about thirty feet off, a monster elephant, with his herd
behind him, all looking astonished at the scene.

The words ran after this fashion:--

"Thou monarch of beasts, thou king of the woods,
Thou dangerous beast in thy angry moods,
Thou elephant strong, thou form of great might,
Behold Kalulu before thee for fight!
I've come from the green groves of Liemba,
From the country of old Loralamba,
With magic from Soltali Mganga [Magic Doctor],
The surest and best of his Uganga [Magic Medicine].
Then look at that sun, look at the pool
In which thou didst revel, and think so cool;
Look on that forest, and look on this grass.
The sweetest and best of this wide morass;
No more shalt thou see the sun or the pool,
No more shalt thou revel in waters cool,
No more shalt thou walk in