he pointed eagerly in front of him; and, following the direction of his finger, my eyes alighted, not on the elephant as I expected, but upon Col. Hamilton, who, from behind the trunk of a small tree, was gazing intently towards the little stream, which ran not more than thirty yards from where he was standing. With the greatest care I stole to his side. ‘There he is, in front of you, standing in the stream. You had better take him at once, or he will be off again,’ were the welcome words which greeted my ears. At the same moment my eyes were gratified by the indistinct outline of the mighty bull, who, already suspicious of danger, was standing perfectly motionless in the middle of the stream, which was so narrow that the branches of the low bamboos on its banks nearly met across it. The distance, twenty-seven yards, was too great for certainty: but there was no choice; as, even if the elephant had been utterly unaware of our vicinity, the tangled, thorny nature of the dense jungle surrounding him would have rendered it impossible to approach nearer without discovery. As it was, the perfect immobility of all save his eye, and every now and then the quickly altered position of his tattered ears, showed undeniably that the chances of flight and battle were being weighed in the massive head, and that there was no time to lose. Covering the orifice of the ear with as much ease as if the shot had been at an egg at a hundred yards, I fired. A heavy crash, and the sudden expulsion of the stream from its bed ten or twelve feet into the air, followed the report; and I have a dim recollection of my old friend hugging me the next minute in his delight while he exclaimed, ‘Splendid, old boy! he’s dead, and the biggest tusker ever killed in India.’ But our work was not over yet. With one or two tremendous lurches from side to side, the old bull regained his feet, but only to be again felled by my second barrel, and this time to rise no more. The shades of evening were closing in fast, and a long journey lay between us and home, so we had but a few moments to admire the grandest trophy it has ever fallen to the lot of a sportsman to secure.”