H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ Now a vulture even when he is so high as to be beyond sight can see the body of a dwarf antelope, let alone an elephant, so this chap wasn’t coming up and down to prospect; it was sheer impatience, hunger. And I was thinking how full of hunger that sky was when Tellemark shifted his position, and looking up I saw a bull rhino that had broken out of the thick stuff on the forest edge and was coming toward us moving quick, but unflurried. ”

“ Seems to me sometimes as if the animal and bird world is driven by clockwork, not sense. Then, other times, it seems as though there were a big genius behind their movements. Anyhow, the rhino came along unwarned and Tellemark let him get within thirty yards before he dropped him with a shoulder shot, dead as mutton.
“The boys working on the tusks had been looking on, so had Gombi; and when the dwarf saw old pongo graveled like that he came running for all he was worth, skipping round the dead brute, plugging his finger in the bullet wound and sucking it same as a child might with a pie. ”

“ We went along the wood belt due west for half a day, then the forest took a big bend and as we turned it, just about three in the afternoon, we came on great wads of chewed bowstring hemp lying about, and the trees alongside of us looked as if a hurricane had stripped them of their leaves and broken their branches. Elephants are vegetarians and there’s not a vegetable they won’t eat from an acacia tree to a cabbage; they’ll beat small trees down and eat them clear of leaves and bark, and they’ll simply skin big trees, besides reaching up with their trunks and stripping the branches. ”

“ They weren't feeding in the forest itself, but in a great bay among the trees; a fairish big herd, bulls, cows, and calves, some of the calves not more than a week old, little pinkish beggars, not bigger than a Newfoundland dog. We dropped two bulls, and when we'd taken their tusks and had supper that night, Gombi had fairly put his clutch on us and we were ready to follow him anywhere. ”

“ We thought at first that the arrows were used for killing small birds, but our Kafirs knew different; they pointed to the elephant; and, sure enough, there was an arrow sticking in the great ear of the brute, and three or four more sticking in the skin. They were poisoned arrows, and what the poison could have been, Lord knows, but something pretty powerful, for a rifle couldn’t have done the business better. We gave the arrows back to the chap, and the bow, expecting to see him make off to the woods after the others. Not he. ”

“ We daren’t build a fire and we put out no sentries. If Gombi were laying round, sentries were no use against him in that black dark and he was the only thing we feared. We lay spread about, the boys pretty close together and Tellemark and I apart from them and side by side. ”

“ For the chief protagonist is not Gombi but Patrick Spence.
It remains only to ask and answer the debated question—does the gun like the fishing rod breed liars?
At the great sale after Sir Patrick’s death I bought those slippers for four and sixpence and sent them to a high authority, with a simple question and a stamped telegraph form. The reply came promptly next day. “Absolutely not. Lamb skin.” ”

“ Not a bad idea either, only we hadn't a wild cat. Then I solved the business by jumping down myself. He showed no fight and we had him out in a tick and he bothered the world no more.
"That's all; we got back to camp all right, only we forgot the tusks in our excitement, nearly three hundred pounds of ivory.
"Those slippers," finished the collector of trophies "are made of Gombi's skin. Allenby, of Bond Street, made them for me." ”

“ The trunk and feet had been cut off and the stomach cut open with a big stick stuck to keep it so; half the tribe was inside the elephant and half on top and round about. But when they saw us they dropped everything and made off, running for the woods—reminded me of a lot of sparrows flying from a cat; but one chap failed to get away, he tripped on something, fell flat on his face, and before he could get on his hands and knees, I had him.
“He kicked and fought, but only from fright, and after a while he quieted down and Tellemark gave him some sugar. ”

“ When we’d taken the tusks of the elephant and some of the rhino meat, we determined to shove right across and camp near the other woodside; first of all the elephant was getting more punch in its perfume ”

“ That was against reason, for it was clear that by searching we might be able to find those three roads again that would lead us back east, and where there’s half a chance no man has a right to give in. ”