Never have I seen a man, black or white, so delighted as was that
vainglorious Kafir. For whole hours he danced and sang and took snuff
and saluted with his hand, telling me the story of his deed over and
over again, no single version of which tale agreed with the other. He
took a new title also, that meant "Eater-up-of-Elephants"; he allowed
one of his men to "bonga"--that is, praise--him all through the night,
preventing us from getting a wink of sleep, until at last the poor
fellow dropped in a kind of fit from exhaustion, and so forth. It
really was very amusing until it became a bore.

Besides the elephants we killed lots of other things, including two
lions, which I got almost with a right and left, and three white
rhinoceroses, that now, alas! are nearly extinct. At last, towards the
end of the third week, we had as much as our men could carry in the
shape of ivory, rhinoceros horns, skins and sun-dried buckflesh, or
biltong, and determined to start back for Umbezi's kraal next day.
Indeed, this could not be long delayed, as our powder and lead were
running low; for in those days, it will be remembered, breechloaders had
not come in, and ammunition, therefore, had to be carried in bulk.

To tell the truth, I was very glad that our trip had come to such a
satisfactory conclusion, for, although I would not admit it even to
myself, I could not get rid of a kind of sneaking dread lest after all
there might be something in the old dwarf's prophecy about a
disagreeable adventure with a buffalo which was in store for me. Well,
as it chanced, we had not so much as seen a buffalo, and as the road
which we were going to take back to the kraal ran over high, bare
country that these animals did not frequent, there was now little
prospect of our doing so--all of which, of course, showed what I already