Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/53

 of elephants abandoning one of their number that was wounded and not very badly wounded, either.

I had gone into the forest again, and had come upon another bunch in very thick country. I could only get little glimpses of a patch of hide or ivory once in a while. After working along with them for a while in the hope of getting into more open ground I tried the experiment of beating on the tree trunks with sticks. This was new to them as it was to me. I felt sure it would make them run but I wasn't sure whether they would go toward it or away from it. Happily they bolted from the forest into the high grass, grumbling all the while. I followed as closely as I dared until finally, in hope of getting a view over the top of the high grass, I started to climb a tree. Just then they rushed back into the forest, fortunately to one side of me. I thought it was time to quit, so we started back to camp. At that moment I heard another group of elephants. They were coming out of the forest into the grass. I climbed up an ant-hill where I could see them as they passed over a ridge. There were eleven of them and not a specimen that I wanted among them. I stood watching to see what would happen next. They were about three hundred yards away when they got my wind. Back they came, rumbling, trumpeting, and squealing. I knew that I had trouble on my hands. The only thing for me to do was to stick, for if I got down in the tall grass I couldn't see anything at all. They came up over a hill, but they were not coming straight toward me and it looked as if they would pass me at