Without question it was the worst place in the world to encounter an elephant.

And I prayed that we might get into more open forest before we came up with the ones we were trailing.

You can't imagine how earnestly we all joined in that prayer.
It was at this unpropitious moment that we heard--startlingly near--the sharp crash of a tusk against a tree somewhere just ahead.

It was a most unwelcome sound.

There was no way of determining where the elephant was, for we were hemmed in by solid walls of bush and could not have seen an elephant ten feet on either side of the narrow trail.