by Mayne Reid
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MAKING THE ELEPHANT'S BED.
To the hunters time was a consideration. If the elephant should returnthat day it would be just before the hottest hours of noon. They had,therefore, scarce an hour left to prepare for him--to "make his bed," asSwartboy had jocosely termed it. So they went to work with alacrity, theBushman acting as director-general, while the other two received theirorders from him with the utmost obedience.
The first work which Swartboy assigned to them was to cut and preparethree stakes of hard wood. They were to be each about three feet long,as thick as a man's arm, and pointed at one end.
These were soon procured. The iron-wood which grew in abundance in theneighbourhood, furnished the very material; and after three pieces ofsufficient length had been cut down with the axe, they were reduced tothe proper size, and pointed by the knives of the hunters.
Meanwhile Swartboy had not been idle. First, with his knife he had cut alarge section of bark from the elephant's tree, upon the side againstwhich the animal had been in the habit of leaning, and about three feetfrom the ground. Then with the axe he made a deep notch, where the barkhad been removed--in fact, such a notch as would have caused the tree tofall had it been left to itself. But it was not, for before advancing sofar in his work, Swartboy had taken measures to prevent that. He hadstayed the tree by fastening the rheim to its upper branches on theopposite side, and then carrying the rope to the limbs of another treethat stood out in that direction.
Thus adjusted, the elephant's tree was only kept from falling by therheim-stay; and a slight push, in the direction of the latter, wouldhave thrown it over.
Swartboy now replaced the section of bark, which he had preserved; andafter carefully collecting the chips, no one, without close examination,could have told that the tree had ever felt the edge of an axe.
Another operation yet remained to be performed--that was the plantingof the stakes, already prepared by Von Bloom and Hendrik. To set thesefirmly, deep holes had to be made. But Swartboy was just the man to makea hole; and in less than ten minutes he had sunk three, each over a footdeep, and not a half-inch wider than the thickness of the stakes!
You may be curious to know how he accomplished this. You would have duga hole with a spade, and necessarily as wide as the spade itself. ButSwartboy had no spade, and would not have used it if there had beenone--since it would have made the holes too large for his purpose.
Swartboy sunk his holes by "crowing"--which process he performed bymeans of a small pointed stick. With this he first loosened the earth ina circle of the proper size. He then took out the detached mould, flungit away, and used the point of the "crowing stick" as before. Anotherclearing out of mould, another application of the stick; and so on, tillthe narrow hole was deemed of sufficient depth. That was how Swartboy"crowed" the holes.
They were sunk in a kind of triangle near the bottom of the tree, but onthe side opposite to that where the elephant would stand, should heoccupy his old ground.
In each hole Swartboy now set a stake, thick end down and point upwards;some small pebbles, and a little mould worked in at the sides, wedgedthem as firmly as if they had grown there.
The stakes were now daubed over with soft earth, to conceal the whitecolour of the wood; the remaining chips were picked up, and all tracesof the work completely obliterated. This done the hunters withdrew fromthe spot.
They did not go far; but choosing a large bushy tree to leeward, allthree climbed up into it, and sat concealed among its branches.
The field-cornet held his long "roer" in readiness, and so did Hendrikhis rifle. In case the ingenious trap of Swartboy should fail, theyintended to use their guns, but not otherwise.
It was now quite noon, and the day had turned out one of the hottest.But for the shade afforded by the leaves, they would have felt it verydistressing. Swartboy prognosticated favourably from this. The greatheat would be more likely than anything else to send the elephant to hisfavourite sleeping-place under the cool shady cover of the cameel-doorn.
It was now quite noon. He could not be long in coming, thought they.
Sure enough he came, and soon, too.
They had not been twenty minutes on their perch, when they heard astrange, rumbling noise, which they knew proceeded from the stomach ofan elephant. The next moment they saw one emerge from the jungle, andwalk, with sweeping step, straight up to the tree. He seemed to have nosuspicion of any danger; but placed himself at once alongside the trunkof the acacia--in the very position and on the side Swartboy had said hewould take. From his spoor the Bushman knew he had been in the habit ofso standing.
His head was turned from the hunters, but not so much as to prevent themfrom seeing a pair of splendid tusks,--six feet long at the least.
While gazing in admiration at these rich trophies, they saw the animalpoint his proboscis upward, and discharge a vast shower of water intothe leaves, which afterwards fell dripping in bright globules over hisbody!
Swartboy said that he drew the water from his stomach. Althoughcloset-naturalists deny this, it must have been so; for shortly after,he repeated the act again and again--the quantity of water at eachdischarge being as great as before. It was plain that his trunk, largeas it was, could not have contained it all.
He seemed to enjoy this "shower-bath;" and the hunters did not wonder atit, for they themselves, suffering at the time from heat and thirst,would have relished something of a similar kind. As the crystal dropsfell back from the acacia leaves, the huge animal was heard to utter alow grunt expressive of gratification. The hunters hoped that this wasthe prelude to his sleep, and watched him with intense earnestness.
It proved to be so.
As they sat gazing, they noticed that his head sunk a little, his earsceased their flapping, his tail hung motionless, and his trunk, nowtwined around his tusks, remained at rest.
They gaze intently. Now they see his body droop a little to oneside--now it touches the tree--there is heard a loud crack, followed bya confused crashing of branches--and the huge dark body of the elephantsinks upon its side.
At the same instant a terrible scream drowns all other sounds, causingthe forest to echo, and the very leaves to quake. Then follows aconfused roaring, mingled with the noise of cracking branches, and thestruggles of the mighty brute where he lies kicking his giant limbsalong the earth, in the agonies of death!
The hunters remain in the tree. They see that the elephant is down--thathe is impaled. There will be no need for their puny weapons. Their gamehas already received the death-wound.
The struggle is of short duration. The painful breathing that precedesdeath is heard issuing from the long proboscis; and then follows a deepominous silence.
The hunters leap down, and approach the prostrate body. They see that itstill lies upon the terrible _chevaux de frise_, where it had fallen.The stakes have done their work most effectively. The elephant breathesno more. He is dead!
It was the work of an hour to cut out those splendid tusks. But ourhunters thought nothing of that; and they were only the more pleased tofind each of them a heavy load--as much as a man could carry!
Von Bloom shouldered one, Swartboy the other, while Hendrik loadedhimself with the guns and implements; and all three, leaving the carcassof the dead elephant behind them, returned triumphantly to camp.