In the meantime the tent is pitched, our friends are employed in
unpacking the guns, and, after some hours have elapsed, the trackers
return: they have found the herd, and the watchers are left to observe
them.

The guns are loaded and the party starts. The trackers run quickly on
the track until they meet one of the watchers who has been sent back
upon the track by the other watchers to give the requisite information
of the movements of the herd since the trackers left. One tracker now
leads the way, and they cautiously proceed. The boughs are heard
slightly rustling as the unconscious elephants are fanning the flies
from their bodies within a hundred yards of the guns.

The jungle is open and good, interspersed with plots of rank grass; and
quietly following the head tracker, into whose hands our friends have
committed themselves, they follow like hounds under the control of a
huntsman. The tracker is a famous fellow, and he brings up his employers
in a masterly manner within ten paces of the still unconscious
elephants. He now retreats quietly behind the guns, and the sport
begins. A cloud of smoke from a regular volley, a crash through the
splintering branches as the panic-stricken herd rush from the scene of
conflict, and it is all over. X. has killed two, Y. has killed one, and
Z. knocked down one, but he got up again and got away; total, three
bagged. Our friends now return to the tent, and, after perhaps a month
of this kind of shooting, they arrive at their original headquarters,
having bagged perhaps twenty elephants. They give their opinion upon
elephant-shooting, and declare it to be capital sport, but there is no
danger in it, as the elephants INVARIABLY RUN AWAY.