[Drawing: _The Policemen of the Plains_]

The kongoni is the policeman of the plains. He is the self-appointed
guardian of all the other animals, and for some strange, unselfish
reason, he always does sentinel duty for the others. His eyes are so
keen that he sees your hat when you appear over the horizon two miles
away, and from that moment he never loses sight of you. If you approach
too near he whistles shrilly, and every other animal within several
hundred yards is on the alert and apprehensive. The kongoni often risks
his own life to warn other herds of animals of the approach of danger,
and if I were going to write an animal story I'd use the kongoni as my
hero. The hunters hate him for the trouble he gives them, but a
fair-minded man can not help but recognize the heroic, self-sacrificing
qualities of the big, awkward, vigilant antelope. Why these two
sentinels had not seen us is still and always will be a mystery, but it
is certain that they had not.

At the same time we knew that any attempt to approach nearer would alarm
them and they in turn would sound the shrill tocsin of warning to the
unsuspecting elephant herd, in which event we might have to track the
elephants for miles until they settled down again. So we cautiously
climbed down, retreated below the edge of the hill, and worked our way
up in the lee of the group farthest to our left in the expectation of
finding the three bulls. From tree to tree, and in the protection of
large ant-hills, we moved forward until we were less than fifty yards
from the elephants. Then we studied them again, but could not locate the
bulls.

Probably at this time something may have occurred to make the elephants
nervous. Perhaps the warning cry of a bird or the suspicious rustling of
our footsteps in the tall grass, but at any rate the herd began to move
slowly away. Two of the larger groups marched solemnly down the slope
away from us and the other disappeared among the low scrub trees to our
right. We followed the two larger groups and soon were again within a
few yards of them. An ant-hill four or five feet high gave us some
protection, and over the top of this we watched the enormous animals as
they stood under the trees ahead of us. While watching these two large
groups we forgot about the one that had disappeared to the right.

Suddenly one of the gunbearers whispered a warning and we turned to see
this group only a few yards from us and bearing directly down to