Or it may be said that hunting is ever a love-affair. The hunter is in love with the game, real hunters are true animal lovers. But during the hours of the hunt itself he is more than that, he is infatuated with the head of game which he follows and means to make his own; nothing much besides it exists to him in the world. Only, in general, the infatuation will be somewhat one-sided. The gazelles and antelopes and the zebra, which on safari you shoot to get meat for your porters, are timid and will make themselves scarce and in their own strange way disappear before your eyes; the hunter must take wind and terrain into account and sneak close to them slowly and silently without their realizing the danger. It is a fine and fascinating art, in the spirit of that masterpiece of my countryman Sören Kierkegaard, The Seducer’s Diary, and it may, in the same way, provide the hunter with moments of great drama and with opportunity for skill and cunning, and for self-gratulations. Yet to me this pursuit was never the real thing. And even the big game, in the hunting of which there is danger, the buffalo or the rhino, very rarely attack without being attacked, or believing that they are being attacked.

Elephant-hunting is a sport of its own. For the elephant, which through centuries has been the one head of game hunted for profit, in the course of time has adopted man into his scheme of things, with deep distrust. Our nearness to him is a challenge which he will never disregard; he comes towards us, straightly and quickly, on his own, a towering, overwhelming structure, massive as cast iron and lithe as running water. ‘What time he lifteth up himself on high, the mighty are afraid.’ Out go his ears like a dragon’s wings, giving him a grotesque likeness to the small lap-dog called a papillon; his formidable trunk, crumpled up accordion-like, rises above us like a lifted scourge. There is passion in our meeting, positiveness on both sides; but on his side there is no pleasure in the adventure, he is driven on by just wrath, and is settling an ancient family feud.