Had the aggageers been with me, I should have had
great sport with this herd; but, with the exception of Taher
Noor, the men were bad horsemen, and even he was afraid of the
ground, which was frightfully dangerous.
We discovered that the bullet had passed through the great artery
of the heart, which had caused the instantaneous death of the
elephant I had shot.
We were now at least seventeen miles from camp, and I feared that
Aggahr would be lost, and would most likely be devoured by a lion
during the night: thus I should lose not only my good old hunter,
but my English saddle. I passed several hours in searching for
him in all directions, and, in order to prevent him from straying
to the south, we fired the grass in all directions; we thus had
a line of fire between the camp and ourselves; this burnt slowly,
as the north wind had carried the blaze rapidly in the other
direction. We rode along the bottom of a watercourse and reached
the Salaam river, thus avoiding the fire; but, some hours before
we neared the camp, night had set in. We had beaten the fire, as
we had got to windward, and slowly and tediously we toiled along
the crumbling soil, stumbling among the crevices, that were
nearly invisible in the moonlight.
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