“And what became of the tusks of the three bulls which you shot! You must have left them at Nala’s kraal, I suppose.”
The old gentleman’s face fell at this question.
“Ah,” he said, “that is a very sad story. Nala promised to send them with my goods to my agent at Delagoa, and so he did. But the men who brought them were unarmed, and, as it happened, they fell in with a slave caravan under the command of a half-bred Portuguese, who seized the tusks, and what is worse, swore that he had shot them. I paid him out afterwards, however,” he added with a smile of satisfaction, “but it did not give me back my tusks, which no doubt have been turned into hair brushes long ago;” and he sighed.
“Well,” said Good, “that is a capital yarn of yours, Quatermain, but—”
“But what?” he asked sharply, foreseeing a draw.
“But I don’t think that it was so good as mine about the ibex—it hasn’t the same finish.”
Mr. Quatermain made no reply. Good was beneath it.
“Do you know, gentlemen,” he said, “it is half-past two in the morning, and if we are going to shoot the big wood tomorrow we ought to leave here at nine-thirty sharp.”
“Oh, if you shoot for a hundred years you will never beat the record of those three woodcocks,” I said.
“Or of those three elephants,” added Sir Henry.
And then we all went to bed, and I dreamed that I had married Maiwa, and was much afraid of that attractive but determined lady.
Endnotes
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The Editor would have been inclined to think that in relating this incident Mr. Quatermain was making himself interesting at the expense of the exact truth, did it not happen that a similar incident has come within his knowledge. —Editor ↩
-
For the satisfaction of any who may be so disbelieving as to take this view of Mr. Quatermain’s story, the Editor may state that a gentleman with whom he is acquainted, and whose veracity he believes to be beyond doubt, not long ago described to him how he chanced to kill four African elephants with four consecutive bullets. Two of these elephants were charging him simultaneously, and out of the four three were killed with the head shot, a very uncommon thing in the case of the African elephant. —Editor ↩
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The largest elephant tusk of which the Editor has any certain knowledge scaled one hundred and fifty pounds. ↩
-
About one hundred and twenty miles. —Editor ↩
Colophon
Maiwa’s Revenge
was published in 1888 by
H. Rider Haggard.
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