haphazard,
at the head of the nearest, the unwounded bull.

"Now, as you know, in the case of the African elephant, whose skull is
convex, and not concave like that of the Indian, this is always a most
risky and very frequently a perfectly useless shot. The bullet loses
itself in the masses of bone, that is all. But there is one little vital
place, and should the bullet happen to strike there, it will follow
the channel of the nostrils--at least I suppose it is that of the
nostrils--and reach the brain. And this was what happened in the present
case--the ball struck the fatal spot in the region of the eye and
travelled to the brain. Down came the great bull all of a heap, and
rolled on to his side as dead as a stone. I swung round at that instant
to face the third, the monster bull with one tusk that I had wounded
two days before. He was already almost over me, and in the dim moonlight
seemed to tower above me like a house. I lifted the rifle and pulled
at his neck. It would not go off! Then, in a flash, as it were, I
remembered that it was on the half-cock. The lock of this barrel was a
little weak, and a few days before, in firing at a cow eland, the
left barrel had jarred off at the shock of the discharge of the right,
knocking me backwards with the recoil; so after that I had kept it on
the half-cock till I actually wanted to fire it.

"I gave one desperate bound to the right, and, my lame leg
notwithstanding, I believe that few men could have made a better jump.
At any rate, it was none too soon, for as I jumped I felt the wind made
by the tremendous downward stroke of the monster's trunk. Then I ran for
it.

"I ran like a buck, still keeping hold of my gun, however. My idea,
so far as I could be said to have any fixed idea, was to bolt down the
pathway up which I had come, like a rabbit down a burrow, trusting that
he would lose sight of me in the uncertain light. I sped across the
glade. Fortunately the bull, being wounded, could not go full speed;
but wounded or no, he could go quite as fast as I could. I was unable to
gain an inch, and away we went, with just about three feet between our
separate extremities. We were at the other side now, and a glance served
to show me that I had miscalculated and overshot the opening. To reach
it now was hopeless; I should have blundered straight into the elephant.
So I did the only thing I could do: I swerved like a course hare, and
started off round the edge of the glad