and it struck me that by the exercise of a little ingenuity I might bag
one or more of them without exposing myself to any risk, which, having
the highest respect for the aggressive powers of bull elephants, was a
great consideration to me.

"This then was my plan. To the right of the huts as you look up the
kloof, and commanding the mealie lands, stands the baobab tree that I
have mentioned. Into that baobab tree I made up my mind to go. Then
if the elephants appeared I should get a shot at them. I announced my
intentions to the head man of the kraal, who was delighted. 'Now,'
he said, 'his people might sleep in peace, for while the mighty white
hunter sat aloft like a spirit watching over the welfare of his kraal
what was there to fear?'

"I told him that he was an ungrateful brute to think of sleeping in
peace while, perched like a wounded vulture on a tree, I watched for his
welfare in wakeful sorrow; and once more he collapsed, and owned that my
words were 'sharp but just.'

"However, as I have said, confidence was completely restored; and that
evening everybody in the kraal, including the superannuated victim of
jealousy in the little hut where the mealie cobs were stored, went to
bed with a sense of sweet security from elephants and all other animals
that prowl by night.

"For my part, I pitched my camp below the kraal; and then, having
procured a beam of wood from the head man--rather a rotten one, by the
way--I set it across two boughs that ran out laterally from the baobab
tree, at a height of about twenty-five feet from the ground, in such
fashion that I and another man could sit upon it with our legs hanging