I could hear him grumbling in there from time to time. I didn't expect him to last much longer so I got my lunch and ate it while I listened and watched. I had just finished and had a puff or two on my pipe when he let out another squeal and charged. He evidently had moved around until he had wind of me. I didn't see him but I heard him, and grabbing the gun I stood ready. But he didn't come. Instead I heard the breaking of the bushes as he collapsed. His last effort had been too much for him.
The efforts of the next elephant who tried the quiet waiting game on me were almost too much for me.
We had just come down from the ice fields seventeen thousand feet up on the summit of Mt. Kenia, overlord of the game regions of British East Africa, and had come out of the forest directly south of the pinnacle and within two or three miles of an old camping ground in the temperate climate, five or six thousand feet above sea level, where we had camped five years before and again one year before. Instead of going on around toward the west to the base camp we decided to stop here and have the base camp brought up to us. Mrs. Akeley was tired, so she said she would stay at the camp and rest; and I decided to take advantage of the time it would take to bring up the base camp to go back into the bamboo and get some forest photographs.
There was perfectly good elephant country around our camp but I wanted to go back up where the forests stop and the bamboo flourishes, because it was a bamboo setting that I had selected for the group
