On reaching the encampment of his friends he heard they were away on the Hanyane river, so he at once decided to follow them. Next day Selous killed a sable bull and met his friends close to the scene of the elephant slaughter of the previous Sunday. Clarkson and Wood had already killed forty elephants, and had to record the death of Quabeet, Wood's head Kafir, by a tuskless bull elephant. Selous gives some particulars of this unhappy event in a letter to his mother (December 25th, 1878): "Mr. Clarkson came across a troop of elephants and commenced shooting at them. Whilst killing one he heard another screaming terrifically, and galloped in that direction but saw nothing. In the evening Quabeet was missing, but no one thought anything could have happened to him except that he had lost himself. On the second day, however, as he did not turn up, Clarkson bethought him of the continuous screaming he had heard, and remembered to have seen a gigantic tuskless bull turn out by himself, whose spoor he resolved to follow the next morning. This he did, and soon found the place where the elephant had chased a man; there he found Quabeet's gun, and near it the odds and ends of skin he had worn round his waist and finally what remained of Quabeet. The poor fellow had been torn into three pieces. The elephant must have held him down with his foot and then torn him asunder with his trunk." On September 14th the party found a herd of cow elephants and shot six, and on September 17th they all went north-east to the mahobo-hobo forests which lie between the Umsengasi and Hanyane rivers to look for elephants. The same evening they found two old bulls near the Umbila river. Selous quickly killed three bulls and a cow. "The fourth I tackled," he says, "cost me six bullets and gave me a smart chase, for my horse was now dead beat. I only got away at all by the skin of my teeth as, although the infuriated animal whilst charging trumpeted all the time like a railway engine, I could not get my tired horse out of a canter until he was close upon me, and I firmly believe that had he not been so badly wounded he would have caught me. I know the shrill screaming sounded unpleasantly near." Immediately after this episode the herd of elephants showed signs of exhaustion. "The poor animals were now completely knocked up, throwing water (taken from their stomachs) over their heated bodies as they walked slowly along." But the hunters stuck to them until their cartridges were exhausted; all, that is to say, except Selous, who had still thirteen left. Selous then selected a big cow for his next victim, and experienced one of the narrowest escapes of his whole adventurous life.[21]