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So Umboo and the other wild elephants who were caught at the same time as he was, stayed around the lumber camp, and did work for their white and black masters.
We must have got him, had it been earlier, as he could not have gone far forward, for the lines of fire were beyond him, and we had him between the fire and the elephants. We got home about 6.30, rather disappointed at missing such a glorious prize, so true is it that a sportsman's soul is never satisfied.
I got to liking the senator's son and had him come in the tent, and we put in the afternoon looking at the animals. The elephants were chewing hay and looking fierce, and the senator's boy said elephants were the greatest cowards on earth, and I said, "Not on your life; the giant in our show is the greatest coward, and the behemoth of holy writ is next."
I can hardly bear to talk of it even now, and it will be two years this August. But come up to my room. By Jove, I am glad to see you! How is it you are in Geneva? I was thinking about you yesterday, and wondering whether you were drifting down the Nile in a dahabeeah, or crossing the desert on a dromedary. Of course you have hunted tigers and elephants: did you kill anything?"
As I was posted at the sharp angle of the corner, I presently observed several elephants emerge upon my left and right, as the line advanced with wonderful regularity, and so close were the animals together that it was most unlikely any tiger could have broken back. My servant Michael was behind me in the howdah.
Three or four small boxes contained all the baggage of the party. The only provisions were a few pounds of biscuits, coffee, tea, and sugar; their main reliance being upon the game which they expected to kill, and, this failing, upon the proceeds of about ten dollars' worth of beads. They also took with them a few elephants' tusks, which Sekeletu sent by way of a trading venture.
Those two chastisers of foes tore each other's body with their arrows, like two elephants tearing each other with the points of their tusks. Roaring at each other and showering their arrows upon each other, causing their cars to trace beautiful circles, they resembled a couple of mighty bulls roaring at each other in the presence of a cow in her season.
By this time the boys had become full-fledged circus performers, each playing an important part in the performance. His escape, his long tramp to rejoin his own show, followed by the battle of the elephants will be well remembered by all the readers of the previous volumes in this series.
Late that same evening Mafuta also returned, with the intelligence that although he had not actually seen either elephants or buffaloes, he had obtained, from natives whom he had encountered, intelligence of a large herd of the former at a distance of four days' trek from the river.
No animal, not a tree climber, could possibly cross the stream on account of the straight up and down banks. So after a time we crept along through the grass at the edge of the stream until we reached a point probably forty yards from where the elephants doubtless were, although quite hidden from our view.
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