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 late. I didn't see him when he got our wind but I knew perfectly he had it for there was the sudden crash of his wheel in the bushes and a scream. An elephant's scream is loud and shrill and piercing. And it is terrifying, too—at least to any one who knows elephants—for it means an angry animal and usually a charge. Then came a series of grunts and rumblings. A second or two later he came in sight, his ears spread out twelve feet from tip to tip, his trunk up and jerking fiercely from side to side. There is no way of describing how big an elephant looks under these conditions, or the speed at which he comes. At about thirty yards I shot, but he took it. He stopped, seemingly puzzled but unhurt. I shot the second barrel and looked for my other gun which was thirty feet behind me. The boy ran up with it and I emptied both barrels into the elephant's head, and still he took it like a sand hill. In the meanwhile, Mrs. Akeley had been firing, too. And then he turned and went off again. I went back to Mrs. Akeley. Everything that I knew about elephant shooting had failed to apply in this case. I had stopped him with one shot. That was normal enough. But then I had put three carefully aimed shots into his head at short range, any one of which should have killed him. And he had taken them with only a slight flinch and then had gone off. I felt completely helpless. Turning to Mrs. Akeley, I said:

"This elephant is pretty well shot up, and perhaps we had better wait for developments."

She said: "No, we started it; so let's finish it."