CHAPTER XII

"'TWAS THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS." PHOTOGRAPHING A CHARGING ELEPHANT.
CORNERING A WOUNDED ELEPHANT IN A RIVER JUNGLE GROWTH. A THRILLING
CHARGE. HASSAN'S COURAGE.

On the night of December the twenty-third I sat out in a boma
watching for lions. None came and at the first crack of dawn my two
gunbearers and I crawled out of the tangled mass of thorn branches, and
prepared to return to camp two miles away. We were expecting my sais to
arrive with my horse soon after daybreak, and while waiting for him to
come, and for my gunbearers to get the blankets tied up, I went across
to a neighboring swamp in the hope of getting a bushbuck. I was about
three hundred yards from the boma when my attention was drawn to a
movement in the trees about a quarter of a mile away. I looked and saw
what I first thought was a herd of zebras coming toward me. They looked
dark against the faint light of early dawn and seemed surprisingly big.
Then I realized! They were elephants! I had only my little gun and my
big double-barreled cordite was at the boma, three hundred yards away.
Breathlessly I ran for it, fearing that the elephants might cut me off
before I could reach it. There seemed to be from seven to ten of them,
but they soon disappeared in the trees, going at a fast swinging walk.
Hassan, my first gunbearer, stopped to slip a couple of solid shells in
the gun while I ran to the top of a hill in the hope of catching sight
of the herd. But they had disappeared entirely. We soon found the trail
strongly marked in the dew-covered grass. My sais then appeared with my
horse. He had seen two elephants and they had taken alarm at his scent
and were rapidly fleeing. So I galloped back to camp to tell the rest of
the party and to prepare for a systematic pursuit.

After breakfast, with Akeley, Stephenson, Clark and our gunbearers, the
trail was again picked up where I had left it. It was then a little past
nine and the elephants had two hours' start of us. Their trail indicated
that they were moving fast and so we prepared for a long chase. For
nearly two hours we followed, Akeley tracking with remarkable precision.
Sometimes the trail was faint and merged with older trails, but by
looking carefully the fresh trail was kept. Soon we began to see newly
broken branches from the trees which indicated that the elephants were
getting quieted down and were beginning to feed. It must have been about
eleven o'clock when Stephenson saw