Chapter XXII I am mourned for Dead
My steed was doomed; that was clear enough, for it still stood, helpless and terrified, rooted to the spot and quaking with abject, nerveless fear. Apparently terror had completely bereft it of the power to move, for from the moment (only half a minute ago, in spite of all this talk and telling!) when it caught sight of the “rogue” in full pursuit of M’ngulu until now, it had stood with forefeet apart, ears cocked forward, eyes and nostrils dilated, trembling and snorting, and insensible to direction from the saddle.
As for me, seeing that my horse was doomed, and that if I had still been mounted I should probably have shared its fate, I thanked Heaven for my escape and sprang back into the bush without further ado, leaving the poor brute to its evil destiny. Safe behind a dense, thorny bush I was free to reload my rifle and watch, if I desired it, the elephant’s behaviour with regard to his victim.
This was not a very pleasant sight, and the idea of what would have become of me had I remained in the saddle, trying to get the horse to move, until too late, made me quite faint. It is enough to say that when the “rogue” had done with the poor beast there was not an unbroken bone in its body; for he had knelt upon it, danced upon it with his huge feet, gored it with the stumps of his tusks, thrown it hither and thither, and torn it to bits with his trunk, and, in a word, vented upon it an abandonment of fury which was absolutely terrific to behold.
So quickly did he perform his work, in the madness of his rage, that I, who was obliged to set to work cautiously and with little movement for fear of attracting his attention, had not finished loading my rifle when the second act of the tragedy began.
It was M’ngulu who reappeared next upon the boards. He came galloping up, wailing and weeping at full voice, under the impression, I suppose, that I had fallen a victim as well as my horse; and as he dashed past the elephant’s nose, he first spat at it and cursed it, and then fired off his rifle in a very “promiscuous” manner, one handed. This, though it did not injure the elephant, served to enrage him yet further; and involved M’ngulu in a second race for life.
Of this race and of its upshot I was not a witness, for our good nigger and the raging “rogue” at his heels passed immediately out of my sight, and it was only when I heard in the distance first one shot and then two more that I knew where to look for the hunt. Having now reloaded my rifle, I felt justified in rejoining the chase on foot; and careered away at my best pace in the direction of the shooting. I presently encountered both Jack and the nigger galloping back to meet me so rapidly that I thought at first they were pursued, and hid myself behind a tree in order to save my own skin and perhaps get a telling shot as the brute passed me. But there was no elephant, and M’ngulu was weeping and wailing, and Jack’s face looked white and scared and haggard.
“Jack!” I shouted as the pair rode by. “Hold on a bit! Where’s the?”—
Jack pulled up in a instant, so did M, who ceased wailing on the spot, and, jumping off his horse, commenced dancing around Jack and me in a manner that made me suspect for a moment that the madness of the elephant had infected him.
“Good Heavens, man!” cried Jack, “I thought you were done for. This fool of a nigger has been telling me you were dead—‘White man Peter dead—kill,’ he has been saying, and crying and wailing fit to raise the dead.”
“I wish he could raise my dead horse,” I said; and I described to Jack my own escape.
“Great scissors!” cried Jack. And for some little time such foolish and unmeaning expressions as “Cæsar!” “Snakes alive!” “Scissors!” and so on were the only remarks I could get my friend to make.
“I don’t know which was the bigger fool,” he said at last, “your horse that wouldn’t go or mine that wouldn’t stay. This fool of a beast of mine took me half a mile away before he would consent to return, and I only got a look in at the hunt then thanks to old M here, who kindly brought the elephant to me as I was not allowed to go to the elephant.”
“Still,” I said, “I think your horse was less of a fool than mine under the circumstances. It’s no fault of my poor brute that I was not made jam of by that raging beast. By the bye, I suppose you killed it between you, as you are here and the elephant is not?”
“He’s dead,” said Jack. “You made two good holes in him, but in the wrong place. M’ngulu brought him by me, and I put in a lovely bull’s-eye in the forehead. He went down like a sheep, but struggled upon his knees again. Then I put in a second near the same spot, and M fired off his piece and nearly knocked my cap off—he never went near the elephant. He is a free cannonader, is M; I don’t think we’ll give him rifles to hold in future, Peter—at least, not loaded ones.”
We were now at the scene of the bad elephant’s demise, and Jack showed me where he had stood, and where M’ngulu, and how it had all happened. M’s bullet had really passed very close to Jack’s head, it appeared, for the tree trunk was splintered by it a foot or two above the spot where Jack had been standing.
There lay the “bad ’un,” terrible even in death; a big, vicious, mangy, bony, ungainly elephant as ever went mad and was expelled by a respectable herd. His tusks had been good, but they were spoiled by his first fall, and though we collected the pieces, and M deftly dug out the roots, they were useless as specimens. We made them over to M, however, who sold them, I daresay, for a good price.
After this we shot two or three other elephants before returning southwards; but in each case it being we who hunted them and not they us, as in the instance of the “bad ’un,” the record of our achievements would be uninteresting in comparison, and I shall leave the tale of them to the imagination of my readers, who know well enough how the thing is done, and resume the thread of our history proper, which must be pursued without further digressions; and those who have skipped the hunting adventures may now read on in the certainty that the Treasure business will in future be strictly “attended to,” and that they will not be called upon to skip again, unless, indeed, it be from pure excitement in the incidents of the legitimate story of the hidden money.
Had we known it, we were on the brink, even now, of a very terrible incident indeed.