Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/77

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while the elephant turned circles trying to find him, until, becoming faint from his injuries, Outram dived into the grass at one side. Outram's companion by this time got back into the game and killed the elephant.

Hutchinson's story I have forgotten a little now, but I remember that he said the elephant caught him, brushed the ground with him, and then threw him. The elephant followed him and Hutchinson put off fate a few seconds by somehow getting amongst the elephant's legs. The respite was enough, for the gun boy, by this time, began firing and drove the elephant off.

In all of these cases, unlike mine, the elephants had used their trunks to pick up their victims and to throw them, and they had intended finishing them by trampling on them. This use of the trunk seems more common than the charge with the tusks that had so nearly finished me. Up in Somaliland Dudo Muhammud, my gun boy, showed me the spot where he had seen an elephant kill an Italian prince. The elephant picked the prince up in his trunk and beat him against his tusks, the prince, meanwhile, futilely beating the elephant's head with his fists. Then the elephant threw him upon the ground, walked on him, and then squatted on him, rubbing back and forth until he had rubbed his body into the ground.

But elephants do use their tusks and use them with terrible effect. About the time we were in the Budongo Forest, Mr. and Mrs. Longdon were across Lake Albert in the Belgian Congo. One day Longdon