They
should follow those elephants for one half-hour more, then if we failed
to come upon them I would abandon the pursuit, and we would go straight
to Wambe, chief of the Matuku, and give him hongo.'
"To this compromise the men agreed readily. Accordingly about
half-an-hour later we struck our camp and started, and notwithstanding
my aches and bruises, I do not think that I ever felt in better spirits
in my life. It is something to wake up in the morning and remember that
in the dead of the night, single-handed, one has given battle to and
overthrown three of the largest elephants in Africa, slaying them with
three bullets. Such a feat to my knowledge had never been done before,
and on that particular morning I felt a very 'tall man of my hands'
indeed. The only thing I feared was, that should I ever come to tell
the story nobody would believe it, for when a strange tale is told by
a hunter, people are apt to think it is necessarily a lie, instead of
being only probably so.[*]
[*] For the satisfaction of any who may be so disbelieving
as to take this view of Mr. Quatermain's story, the Editor
may state that a gentleman with whom he is acquainted, and
whose veracity he believes to be beyond doubt, not long ago
described to him how he chanced to kill _four_ African
elephants with four consecutive bullets. Two of these
elephants were charging him simultaneously, and out of the
four three were killed with the head shot, a very uncommon
thing in the case of the African elephant.
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