h any facility overtake him.

How Von Bloom sighed when he thought of his poor horses! Now more than
ever did he feel the want of them--now more than ever did he regret
their loss.

But he had heard that the elephant does not _always_ make off when
attacked. The old bull had shown no intention of retreating, after
receiving their shots. It was the odd conduct of Swartboy that had put
him to flight. But for that, he would no doubt have kept the ground,
until they had given him another volley, and perhaps his death-wound.

The field-cornet drew consolation from this last reflection. Perhaps
their next encounter would have a different ending. Perhaps a pair of
tusks would reward them.

The hope of such a result, as well as the anxiety about it, determined
Von Bloom to lose no time in making a fresh trial. Next morning,
therefore, before the sun was up, the hunters were once more upon the
trail of their giant game.

One precaution they had taken, which they had not thought of before.
All of them had heard that an ordinary leaden bullet will not penetrate
the tough thick skin of the great "pachyderm." Perhaps this had been
the cause of their failure on the preceding day. If so they had
provided against the recurrence of failure from such a cause. They had
moulded a new set of balls of harder material,--solder it should have
been, but they had none. They chanced, however, to be in possession of
what served the purpose equally well--the old "plate" that had often
graced the field-cornet's table in his better byegone days of the Graaf
Reinet. This consisted of candlesticks, and snuffer-trays, and
dish-covers, and cruet-stands, and a variety of articles of the real
"Dutch metal."

Some of these were condemned to the alembic of the melting-pan; and,
mixed with the common lead, produced a set of balls hard enough for the
hide of the rhinoceros itself--so that this day the hunters had no fears
of failure upon the score of soft bullets.

They went in the same direction as upon the preceding day, towards the
forest or "bush" (bosch), as they termed it.

They had not proceeded a mile when they came upon the spoor of elephants
nearly fresh. It passed through the very thickest of the thorny
jungle--where no creature but an elephant, a rhinoceros, or a man with
an axe, could have made way. A family must have passed, consisting of a
male, a female or two, and several young ones of different ages. They
had marched