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His height may be imagined from this rough method of measuring. A gun-bearer climbed upon his back as the elephant lay upon all-fours, and holding a long stick across his spine at right angles, I could just touch it with the points of my fingers by reaching to my utmost height. Thus, as he lay, his back was seven feet two inches, perpendicular height, from the ground.
Running up to my wounded elephant, I extinguished him with my remaining barrel; and getting a spare rifle from Wallace, who was the only gun-bearer who had kept up, I floored another elephant, who was ascending the opposite side of a hollow about forty yards off: this fellow took two shots, and accordingly I was left unloaded.
Masara, Mahomet, Wat Gamma, and Bacheet, formed the establishment of Ehetilla, which was the Arab name of our locality. Bacheet was an inveterate sportsman and was my constant and sole attendant when shooting; his great desire was to accompany me in elephant-hunting, when he promised to carry one of my spare rifles as a trusty gun-bearer, and he vowed that no animal should ever frighten him.
Where was the valiant Bacheet? the would-be Nimrod, who for the last three months had been fretting in inactivity, and longing for the moment of action, when he had promised to be my trusty gun-bearer! He was the last man to appear, and he only ventured from his hiding-place in the high dhurra when assured of the elephants' retreat.
The latter had two favoured followers young Hassan, partly of Arab birth, who acted as his gun-bearer; and a huge negro, a freed man, Sambroko by name, possessed of prodigious strength and courage. These two had followed their master's example, and supplied themselves with gourds of water, two of which the negro carried slung round his neck.
The senses are regularly tuned up, and the limbs are in the same condition from continual exercise. There is a peculiar delight, which passes all description, in feeling thoroughly well-strung, mentally and physically, with a good rifle in your hand and a trusty gun-bearer behind you with another, thus stalking quietly through a fine country, on the look-out for "anything," no matter what.
Many a time when attempting to force my way through this bewildering tangle I had to be released by my gun-bearer from the fast clutches of the "wait-a-bit"; and often with immense pains I succeeded in tracing the lions to the river after they had seized a victim, only to lose the trail from there onwards, owing to the rocky nature of the ground which they seemed to be careful to choose in retreating to their den.
Before nightfall we came to a ridge whereon this bush-veld turned south, fringing that tributary of the great river in the swamps of which we were to hunt for sea-cows. Here we camped and next morning, leaving the waggon in charge of my voorlooper and a couple of the Strathmuir natives, for the driver was to act as my gun-bearer we marched down into the sea of bush-veld.
He prophesied that in certain black eddies plump trout would be lurking, and he made his prophecy good at the first pool. Hazel elected herself gun-bearer to the expedition, but before long Bill took up that office while she snared trout after trout from the stream having become something of an angler herself under Bill's schooling.
I was now at the opposite bank, and nothing would induce him to come near the river, so I told the gun-bearer to drag him across by force. This he accordingly did, and the dog swam with frantic exertions across the river, and managed to disengage his head from the rope. The moment that he arrived on terra firma he rushed up a steep bank and looked attentively down into the water beneath.
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