ion, continued to advance and so
we followed. The elephants, a big cow and a half-grown one, were now
facing us with ears wide spread. They looked very nasty. I thought they
would turn and run away and was not uneasy about the outcome. But to my
great surprise they started toward us, first slowly and then at a rapid
trot, steadily gaining in swiftness. It was a real charge and we yelled
to scare them off. The big cow was in the lead and she had not the
slightest intention of being scared. Her one idea was to annihilate us.
We raised our rifles and continued to yell, but on she rushed. She was
only thirty yards away when Jimmy fired, Fred fired, and then I. The
huge animal sank on her four knees and the half-grown one turned off and
stopped, confused and angry. Akeley had got a splendid photograph of the
charging cow and now he took one of the smaller beast before we
approached the cow. Upon our advance the smaller one ran away but the
big cow never moved again. She was stone dead. The three bullets had
struck her, Jimmy's high as she was head on, Fred's between the eye and
ear as she swung, and mine just behind the orifice of the ear as the
head was still further swung by the shock of Fred's bullet. The elephant
rested on her four knees in an upright position, quite lifelike in
appearance. The small elephant ran off toward those that we had seen on
our right. I suggested that we immediately follow the herd in the hope
that a young bull might be found among them. So off we went and in a few
moments we saw them to our right, apparently returning to where the cow
had been killed. It is entirely likely that the big broken-tusked cow
was going back to make trouble for us. Colonel Roosevelt had a similar
experience with a bull elephant that returned and charged the hunters as
they were standing about one that they had just killed.

[Drawing: _They Whirled Around_]

As the elephants moved along slowly we paralleled them and studied them
as well as we could. One was the big cow with the one broken and one
good tusk. She was leading the group, and was doubtless a vicious
animal. She was an enormous beast, probably over eleven feet in height.
Another was the half-grown elephant, then a smaller one, and lastly a
good-sized elephant with two fairly good tusks. We tried to determine
the sex of this last one, I hoping that it was a bull, but fearing
otherwise. Ake thought it was a cow with tusks about twelve or fourteen
inches long,