Pursued By An Elephant

PURSUED BY AN ELEPHANT

Narrow Escape of Selous, the Hunter, From an Infuriated Bull.

F. C. Selous, the king of big game hunters who for thirty-two years has made his home in the wilds of South Africa, has had many narrow escapes from the fierce beasts he has pursued.

It is eloquent of the daring of the man that of his seventy-eight elephants all but one were shot on foot.

On one occasion when he was pursuing a wounded elephant on foot he found himself hotly chased by an infuriated bull, which was literally whirling its trunk over the huntsman's head and screaming with rage. "How I got away," he says, "I scarcely know. Urged on by the short, piercing screams, I bounded over and through thorn bushes which in cold blood I should have deemed impossible. I emerged from the bush without a shred of clothing on me."

Still undaunted, he turned round on his pursuer, and, raising his gun, fired at him at short range. The gun, however, had been loaded twice, and the recoil dashed him to the ground, inflicting a serious wound on his face, of which he bears the mark today.