with us the three eight-bore rifles, a good supply of ammunition, and
our large water-bottles, filled with weak cold tea, which I have
always found the best stuff to shoot on. After swallowing a little
breakfast we started, Umbopa, Khiva, and Ventvoegel accompanying us.
The other Kafirs we left with instructions to skin the lion and the
sable antelope, and to cut up the latter.

We had no difficulty in finding the broad elephant trail, which
Ventvoegel, after examination, pronounced to have been made by between
twenty and thirty elephants, most of them full-grown bulls. But the
herd had moved on some way during the night, and it was nine o'clock,
and already very hot, before, by the broken trees, bruised leaves and
bark, and smoking droppings, we knew that we could not be far from
them.

Presently we caught sight of the herd, which numbered, as Ventvoegel
had said, between twenty and thirty, standing in a hollow, having
finished their morning meal, and flapping their great ears. It was a
splendid sight, for they were only about two hundred yards from us.
Taking a handful of dry grass, I threw it into the air to see how the
wind was; for if once they winded us I knew they would be off before
we could get a shot. Finding that, if anything, it blew from the
elephants to us, we crept on stealthily, and thanks to the cover
managed to get within forty yards or so of the great brutes. Just in
front of us, and broadside on, stood three splendid bulls, one of them
with enormous tusks. I whispered to the others that I would take the
middle one; Sir Henry covering the elephant to the left, and Good the
bull with the big tusks.

"Now," I whispered.