Evening Star Newspaper, April 19, 1931, Page 92

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. €, APRIL 19, 1931. | — ... Ss——— The Elephant With the Crossed Tusks A Woman Hunter Tells of Tense Moments in the African Jungle—Stalking Huge Beasts on Foot—Taking a Shot at an Animal Just Twelve Feet Away —When the Charge Came. BY MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY. - EDITOR'S NOTE—The charm of the author's story telling is mo- where more cvident than in this ab- sorbing tale of ‘adventure sn the wilds of the Dark Continent. Ex- citing incident and drama combine with an exotic background to make a varn that grips the rcader from first to last. Mrs. Bradley's humor and swift prose does ample justice to a noteworthy theme. T 6 we awoke and hurried out a world beginning to flush with to see if the elephants were near. The boys had not clesed their eyes even during the last hour, and they reported that only one elephant was in sight on the slopes below us, working down to the tall grass, and it was a cow with very small tusks. The others had¥gone before it was light enough to distinguish any of them. I took the glastes and went along the little path, which “was crossed and recrossed by Iast night's elephant tracks, the nearest 30 feet from the tent, and swept the opposite slopes with the glasses, not not an elephant could I see any- where. Herbert sent Omari down the path to keep watch and we had hardly taken a swallow of coffee before he was back reporting that a large elephant had come out in the short grass on " the opposite slope at the edge of the forest, but he had not been able to see any ivory. Herbert seized the glasses and dashed to the lookout point, while I kept cn steadily with coffee, some subtle intuition telling me I was going to need it before that day was over. The next moment Herbert was back. “Mary, what ivory!” he said fervently. He had had the glasses on the elephant as it _ raised its head and had seen tusks of an amazing length and curve. He was sure this * was the big fellow whose description had lured us on this expedition. We caught up guns and buckled on ammunition pouches, shouting for the guides, who should have been diligently Jocating this elephant, but who were sleeping exhaustedly-after thcir night of noise. In a few minutes three of them came racing from the shambas, the leader, our friend of the morikey-skin cap, winding his barkcloth garment about him as he came. Two were our guides of the previous day and the third was a stocky, round-headed young cannibal wearing two inches of barkcloth and a circular haireut that Jeft & caplike crop of wool on the top. None of our perters would carry for us for fear of _ being caught alone by the cannibals, and our guides shouted back for other villagers. into sun still L WE started out along the spur, pausing for i me to see the elephant. He had his back turned and I could not see the exciting tusks, but his size was astounding to me—he loomed up through the glasses like the Woolworth Building. The wind was yariable, making the direct approach as good as any, so down we clambered, losing sight of the elephant on the way. At the bottom of the gully we had to wind through elephant grass so tall that it met over our heads and so thick that we lost sight of anybody two feet ahead. Fresh trails were everywhere, and very likely those were el-phants still there. Earnestly I prayed that those elephants might know how peaceful my intentions were toward them and how anxious I was not to disturb any little morning reverie they might be having. ~hose moments in deep grass were ones in which I reflected sericusly upon the perils of the life we were leading and on how much my child needed her parents’ care. I could find no cogent reason then why we should be plow- ing through 12-foot grass to assassinate an animal amply able to retaliate—in fact, many reasons occurred to me why we should not. I drew a deep breath of relief when we clambered up the side. Then, as we neared the clearing, the excitement of the chase routed every other thought. We gestured to the guidgs, who flitted ahead into the shade like shadows themselves, and into the forest we went. Once within, we whispered to ourselves that this was really a different forest, 2 more cpen forest; that there were glades in it where the sun streamed and the butterflles danced and where we could have seen an elephant high over the bushes. In fact, this was an exception of a forest. * It really was for a little while. Then it decpened and darkened into that silvery green twilighy we had come to know so well. We were on ‘a trail over which the elephants had pdssed but' «° few minutes before, for the spiders wete’ stifl“frintically racing about the torn webs on the creepers that had beén brushed down, and on the trees where the ele- phants had stopped to rub the bark was still bleeding. Deéper and deeper in we went as softly as we could step. Before us a shower of parasitic roots hung like a thousand cords of green velvet. We were about to pass through this curtain in the opening that the great bodies ahead of us had made when a sound to the right arrested us. It was a deep rumble. It was a vivid picture, that circle of jage- green swamp and golden sun rimmed by the dark forest. The circle of it lay to the Ileft and just to the right of the path down which we had come a narrow isthmus of mud and this, trying for a solid foeting by balancing on green clumps, and tried to see what we could see. A sudden bubbling noise welled out in the high grass to the right and told us that our unseen, rumbly elephant was taking his or her morning bath. Squeich and splash. Silence. Then a bubble like a chuckle. Then a lot of bubbles. THE grass was high over our heads behind us and the mud there must be knee high, so there didn’t seem anything to do about that bath but what the elephant was doing. At any. rate, our attention was immediately distracted by an even louder noise in the swamp just ahead of us and as we looked toward it the grasses quivered and out on the opposite bank climbed an elephant. I have seen a hippo climb out of the water looking as big as an elephant, but when that elephant clambered up it Jooked as if the muddy floor of the swamp was rising in front of us. - Certainly it looked big enough to be the one we were after, but none of us could see the ivory. It is harder to see the tusks than you might suppose, for they are not the white, gleaming stuff we know as ivory at home; they are yellowed and dark with earth and green with grass stains and a spray of brush can hide them. Swiftly the jungle swallowed that great back and no one had seen the tusks. It m}ght, of course, be a big cow. If we followed we lost the others. As we stood irresolute, down the bank from which we had just come a breaking of branches told of another elephant meandering along toward the marsh, We had teld the to lead us to elephants and they had certainly done it—amply. We crowded fariher and farther into the grass so that if anything came down the path we should at least have a chance to see it before it stepped on us. There didn’t seem to be anything to do but stand there and see what happened. It seemed to me that anything might happen, with one elephant rambling around unseen on the bank ahead of us, another sauntering alorg the path behind us and a third breathing down the back of my neck. We tried the wind and found it blowing from us across the marsh to the left, but it was shifty and any shift might stir up something. We were just deciding to follow on after the big-backed one we had seen and still heard on ahead when we saw a tree shaking as if seized with a sudden paroxysm on the side we had just left. It rocked as in a gale, then first one branch was lopped off, then another. That tree was stripped as swiftly acd surcly as a Christmas tree in the slums. A hole appeared in the landscape where it had blocked the sky. Breathlessly we waited for the elephant to come in sight, hoping fervently that it was the big tusker. We could have a sure broadside shot if from there he crossed the marsh through the briliiant sunshine, for there was short grass in the middle. We waited, our guns on ready, our fingers curving on the triggers. Those moments of waiting will never be for- gotten. The sheer beauty of that sun-flooded marsh, keyed high lke a water color, with burning jade and gold against the forest dark; the utter quietness of it, broken only by the noiszs of the feeding elephants. It is a strange thirg to stand in the stillness of a wood and listsn to elephants. - It gives a stranger feeling than any other experience, except perhaps the sight of gorillas. The buffalo and the lion may be as dangerous, but they are modern beasty, while the elephant is the creature of ancther age, a contemporary of half-guessed beasts whote fossil bones lie now in rocks. Stace the glacler ice melted and the green camy- she Yorests here had known the fore- fathers of these elephants, a hundred thou- sand years of them, and here they were, utterly at of their framed “karibu” (near), which wasn't any news. The guides were beautifully nonchalant. They were as much at home in this forest as the elephants, though their forefathers had fewer years of tenancy, and they slipped from tree bole to grass blade with the sure and eternal vigilance of wild things in their jungles. They had, too, a large and unquestioning con- fidence in the white man’s magic. branches Were waving again, farther away from us this time. That elephant w.nstcedlnctlongthebanknndappuenuynot coming across. Our youngest cannibal slipped ff through the marsh to investigate and after came back to report that he had got the elephant and that it was the big bull with long tusks. He was going into the forest now, away from the marsh. It has been a marvelous thing to me, all through the forest, the way natives slip up and watch elephants. They act utterly with- out fear, relying on the elephant’s poor sight— if it is poor, which I am not so sure of—and their own agility and silent footedness, The wonder; he. looked anything but a wraith, but he behaved like one. We tried to imitate him as well as clumsy leather and khaki woulds permit, but we made considerable noise, though I reflected that the elephants were making so much themselves that a little more ought to disturb them. Now our cannibal led us off the path fo tree the big tusker had wrecked and then - the spoor to, the place where we had seen tree shaken. There we found a rivor quietl emptying itself into the marsh and, of course, the elephant had crossed that, so we waded over, waist deep, and picked up the tracks again. The trail meandered about unhurriedly, crossing the river again. Sometimes our ele- phant strolled down age-old elephant® paths that were broad and deep, like winding can- yons through the green; sometimes he rambled about on his own sweet way, tramping out a fresh path for himself. Omari breathed to me that the chunky guide » leading had said that we were coming to an open space where we could see the elephants, and in that hope we went on. Soon the boy gestured us to wait and stole ahead to recon- noiter, then he came back and led us, creeping on all fours, to a screen of bushes. He went in first, Omari and I after him, I was to have the first shot, Herbert and close to us. The cannibal smiled at me a triumphant smile which said that at last I should se¢ and ges- tured me to his place. I crawled into it, as he vanished behind me, and lifted the branch. I expected to strain my eyes to discern the dim form of a distant elephant in the brush. I fairly flattened my eyeball against that ele- phant’s front leg. Actually I suppose I was 12 feet away. I don’t really believe I was, but Herbert insists on it. However, what is 12 feet between you and an elephant? r a second I didn’t know what I was look- ing at, so strange was that expanse of hide, red with sun, with bagging creases like dark can- yons. Then I saw. I shall never forget the redness of that leg and the loose, ungartered look of it. % Delicately,” very delicately, I let fall that circuit to the left into the clearing. not really what you would call a clearing except in contrast to the forest, for it was bunchy with thickets and rhythmic with long waving grass. It was the slope of a hill and we edged up the slope trying to make out elephants. The one that had been by the bush had moved on. So we circled along to the right on the top of the slope. Suddenly we saw a great head loom- ing over the thicket—then beyond a back curv- ing through the grass. There were two, three, four, five. Once I began seeing ele saw them all over the place. way down the slope below us, right and left. Their backs were they were feeding as they went. We for the big tusker, but not a glimpse could we get anywhere. The grass long enough to hide the tusks. Not ev one big fellow came out from & walked direcily across to another see his tusks. I held a bead on him till out of sight, but dared not shoot. So we tense and excited. i EE’ 1H§EEEEE:E PN THIN I thought we had lost them. one trunk went up in the air, another and another, until there were three a row, like trained snakes, twisting and turn: ing to see what strange thing there was in the air. A fourth trunk went up to the left. Evi dently they had caught a warning of some new thing they didn't care at all about, for they ceased feeding and made off, not in a rush, but with steady, onward gait. Beyond this clearing was a stretch of tall grass, dipping down the hill, and beyond, on the rising ground opposite, stretched a little bit of clearing in the engulfing forest. They were headed straight that way. Our only hope was to get another look at them in the clearing coming out of the grass. The guides started to race along the top of the slopes we were on, to circle round and approach the clearing from the left. Fearless as they were in the forest, they would not stir a step into country without cover. Herbert started straight ahead. We were just in time, for we were down the slope, on the edge of the tall grass, when the elephants came out from the opposite side and started up the clearing. And then I saw the big tusker. He was red as sandstone in the sunlight, his tusks curving like scimitars ahead of him. Closz behind was another big bull, but I had eyes only for the first. It had been agreed that, if possible, I was to fire alone at my elephant, and Herbert would not come to my assistance unless he had to. I knew he could bring down any elephant he tried for, and I wanted to see what my Spring- field could do, unaided. Now Herbert told me quickly to take the first one and he'd look out for the herd. It was a long shot—300 yards we found it later. I took as true an aim as I eould for a quartering shot into the brain and fired. ,He gave a surge forward and I fired again quickly, but the forest had swallowed him. I didn’t know if he were down or up. Omari cried down, but I was terribly afraid I had 411 charge, If he had got to the tall grass we