Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/76

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into my lungs, and these internal injuries took a long time to heal. As a matter of fact, I don't suppose I would have pulled through even with Mrs. Akeley's care if it hadn't been for a Scotch medical missionary who nearly ran himself to death coming to my rescue. He had been in the country only a little while and perhaps this explains his coming so fast when news reached him of a man who had been mauled by an elephant. The chief medical officer at Fort Hall, knowing better what elephant mauling usually meant, came, but he didn't hurry. I saw him later and he apologized, but I felt no grievance. I understood the situation. Usually when an elephant gets a man a doctor can't do anything for him.

But this isn't always so. Some months later I sat down in the hotel at Nairobi with three other men, who like myself had been caught by elephants and had lived to tell the tale. An elephant caught Black in his trunk, and threw him into a bush that broke his fall. The elephant followed him and stepped on him, the bush this time forming a cushion that saved him, and although the elephant returned two or three times to give him a final punch, he was not killed. However, he was badly broken up.

Outram and a companion approached an elephant that was shot and down, when the animal suddenly rose, grabbed Outram in his trunk and threw him. The elephant followed him, but Outram scrambled into the grass while the elephant trampled his pith helmet into the ground, whereupon Outram got right under the elephant's tail and stuck to this position