rder it was obvious that we should far
outdistance our train.

We invited Brown to follow with all the men while we three skirmished
ahead, but he waxed so apoplectically blasphemous at the very thought
of it that Fred assured him the proposal was intended for a joke. Then
we argued among ourselves, coaxed, blarneyed, persuaded, and tried to
bribe one another. Finally, all else failing, we tossed a coin for it,
odd man out, and Fred lost.

So Brown, Will Yerkes and I, with Kazimoto, our two personal servants,
and six boys to carry one tent for the lot of us and food and cooking
pots, started off just as the moon rose over the nearest cedars, and
laughed at Fred marshaling the sleepy porters by lamplight in the open
space between the house and barn. He was to follow as fast as the
loaded porters could be made to travel, and with that concertina of his
to spur them on there was little likelihood of losing touch. But the
rear-guard, when it comes to pursuing a retreating enemy, is ever the
least alluring place.

"You've got all the luck," he shouted. "Make the most of it or I'll
never gamble on the fall of a coin again!"

That pursuit was a journey of accidents, chapter after chapter of them
in such close sequence that the whole was a nightmare without let-up or
reason. I began the book by falling into an elephant pit.

Before we had gone a mile in the dark we stood in doubt as to whether
the most practicable trail went right or left. Brown set his own
indecision down frankly to the whisky that had muddled him. Even
Kazimoto, who had passed that way three times, did not know for
certain. So I went forward to scout--stepped into the deep shadow of
some jungle--trod on nothing--threw the other foot forward to save
myself--and fell downward into blackness for an eternity.

I brought up at last unhurt in the trash and decaying vegetation at the
bottom of a pit, and looked up to see the stars in a rough
parallelogram above me, whose edge I guessed was more than thirty feet
above my head. I started to dig my way out, but the crumbling sides
fell in and threatened to bury me alive unless I kept still. So I
shouted until my lungs ached, but without result. I suppose the noise
went trumpeting upward out of the hole and away to the clouds and the
stars. At any rate, Will and Brown swore afterward they never heard it.

I was fifteen minutes in the hole that very likely had held many an
elephant with his legs wedg