it impossible for me to fire. In the faint twilight which remained,
however, I could just make out the gray mass of the great brute still
advancing towards the hut. Then the light went altogether and I had to
trust to my ears. I heard him fumbling with his trunk, apparently at the
roof of the hut; next came a sound as of straw being drawn out, and then
for a little while there was complete silence.

"The cloud began to pass; I could see the outline of the elephant; he
was standing with his head quite over the top of the hut. But I could
not see his trunk, and no wonder, for it was _inside the hut_. He had
thrust it through the roof, and, attracted no doubt by the smell of the
mealies, was groping about with it inside. It was growing light now, and
I got my rifle ready, when suddenly there was a most awful yell, and
I saw the trunk reappear, and in its mighty fold the old woman who
had been sleeping in the hut. Out she came through the hole like a
periwinkle on the point of a pin, still wrapped up in her blanket,
and with her skinny arms and legs stretched to the four points of the
compass, and as she did so, gave that most alarming screech. I really
don't know who was the most frightened, she, or I, or the elephant. At
any rate the last was considerably startled; he had been fishing
for mealies--the old woman was a mere accident, and one that greatly
discomposed his nerves. He gave a sort of trumpet, and threw her away
from him right into the crown of a low mimosa tree, where she stuck
shrieking like a metropolitan engine. The old bull lifted his tail, and
flapping his great ears prepared for flight. I put up my eight-bore, and
aiming hastily at the point of his shoulder (for he was broadside on), I
fired. The report rang out like thunder, making a thousand echoes in
the quiet hills. I saw him go down all of a heap as though he were stone
dead. Then, alas! whether it was the kick of the heavy rifle, or the
excited bump of that idiot Gobo, or both together, or merely an unhappy