I believe that he gave it to some museum
or other."
"And what became of the tusks of the three bulls which you shot! You
must have left them at Nala's kraal, I suppose."
The old gentleman's face fell at this question.
"Ah," he said, "that is a very sad story. Nala promised to send them
with my goods to my agent at Delagoa, and so he did. But the men who
brought them were unarmed, and, as it happened, they fell in with a
slave caravan under the command of a half-bred Portuguese, who seized
the tusks, and what is worse, swore that he had shot them. I paid him
out afterwards, however," he added with a smile of satisfaction, "but it
did not give me back my tusks, which no doubt have been turned into hair
brushes long ago;" and he sighed.
"Well," said Good, "that is a capital yarn of yours, Quatermain,
but----"
"But what?" he asked sharply, foreseeing a draw.
"But I don't think that it was so good as mine about the ibex--it hasn't
the same _finish_."
Mr. Quatermain made no reply. Good was beneath it.
"Do you know, gentlemen," he said, "it is half-past two in the morning,
and if we are going to shoot the big wood to-morrow we ought to leave
here at nine-thirty sharp."
"Oh, if you shoot for a hundred years you will never beat the record of
those three woodcocks," I said.
"Or of those three elephants," added Sir Henry.
And then we all went to bed, and I dreamed that I had married Maiwa, and
was much afraid of that attractive but determined lady.
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