On the contrary, if he was sane, and shooting for the pot, he must have acquired a big following in some mysterious manner, or else have lost his marksmanship when Coutlass bruised his eyes.

He fired each day, judging by the echo of the shots, about as many cartridges as we did, who had to feed a fairly long column of men, and make presents of meat, in addition, to the chiefs of villages.

It began to be a mystery how he carried so much ammunition, unless he had donkeys or porters.
Soon we began to pass through a country where elephants bad been.
There was ruin a hundred yards wide, where a herd of more than a thousand of them must have swept in panic for fifteen miles.

There were villages with roofs not yet re-thatched, whose inhabitants came and begged us to take vengeance on the monsters, showing us their trampled enclosures, torn-down huts, and ruined plantations.

They offered to do whatever we told them in the way of taking part, and several times we marshaled the men of two or three villages together in an effort to get a line to windward and drive the herd our way.
But each time, as the plan approached development, ringing shots from behind us put the brutes to flight.