tling me in that way! Why aren't you dead? Look out! What's
the matter with the man? The poor chap's hurt--I knew he was!"

But that inexplicable desire to empty all I had inside me out on to the
trampled ground could no longer be resisted, that was all. The
aftermath of deadly fear is fear's corollary. Each bears fruit after
its kind.

To my one tusker Will and Fred had brought down five and six
respectively. That made twenty-three tusks, for one was an enormous
"singleton." We sent Kazimoto back alone to try to persuade some of
our porters to come and chop out the ivory with axes, bidding him
promise them all the hearts, and as many tail-hairs as they chose to
pull out to keep witches away with. Then, since my sickness passed
presently and left me steady on my legs, Fred made a proposal that we
jumped at.

"Let's go and lay Schillingschen's ghost! If that was Schillingschen
shooting in the forest, we've a little account with him! If it wasn't
I want to know it! Come along!"

We advanced into the forest and toiled up-hill along the tracks the
stampeding elephants had made, amid flies indescribable, and almost
intolerable heat. The blood on my clothing made me a veritable
feeding-place of flies, until I threw most of it off, and then began to
suffer in addition from bites I could not feel before, and from the
sharp points of beckoning undergrowth. My bare legs began to bleed
from scratches, and the flies swooped anew on those, and clung as if
they grew there.

Will climbed a huge tree, at imminent risk of pythons and rotten
branches, and descried open country on our right front. We made for
it, I walking last to take advantage of the others' wake, and after
more than an hour of most prodigious effort we emerged on rolling rocky
country under a ledge that overhung a thousand feet sheer above us on
the side of Elgon. To our right was all green grass, sloping away from
us.

There was a camp half a mile away pitched on the edge of the forest--a
white man's tent--a mule--meat hanging to dry in the wind under a
branch--two tents for natives--and a pile of bags and boxes orderly
arranged. We could see a man sitting under a big tent awning. He was
reading, or writing, or something of that kind. He was certainly not
Schillingschen. We hurried. Fred presently broke into a run; then,
half-ashamed, checked himself and waited for me, who was beyond running.

When we came quite close we saw that the man