e results of the inspection being unsatisfactory,
was cocking his ears and making ready to slay me, there rang out the
short, sharp report of a rifle fired within a few yards. Glancing up
at the instant, I saw blood spurt from the monster's left eye, where
evidently the bullet had found a home.

He felt at his eye with his trunk; then, uttering a scream of pain,
wheeled round and rushed away.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CHASE

I suppose that I swooned for a minute or two. At any rate I remember
a long and very curious dream, such a dream as is evolved by a patient
under laughing gas, that is very clear and vivid at the time but
immediately afterwards slips from the mind's grasp as water does
from the clenched hand. It was something to the effect that all those
hundreds of skeleton elephants rose and marshalled themselves before me,
making obeisance to me by bending their bony knees, because, as I quite
understood, I was the only human being that had ever escaped from Jana.
Moreover, on the foremost elephant's skull Hans was perched like a
mahout, giving words of command, to their serried ranks and explaining
to them that it would be very convenient if they would carry their
tusks, for which they had no further use, and pile them in a certain
place--I forget where--that must be near a good road to facilitate their
subsequent transport to a land where they would be made into billiard
balls and the backs of ladies' hair-brushes. Next, through the figments
of that retreating dream, I heard the undoubted voice of Hans himself,
which of course I knew to be absurd as Hans was lost and doubtless dead,
saying:

"If you are alive, Baas, please wake up soon, as I have finished
reloading Intombi, and it is time to be going. I think I hit Jana in the
eye, but so big a beast will soon get over so little a thing as that and
look for us, and the bullet from Intombi is too small to kill him, Baas,
especially as it is not likely that either of us could hit him in the
other eye."

Now I sat up and stared. Yes, there was Hans himself looking just the
same as usual, only perhaps rather dirtier, engaged in setting a cap on
to the nipple of the little rifle Intombi.

"Hans," I said in a hollow voice, "why the devil are you here?"

"To save you from the devil, of course, Baas," he replied aptly. Then,
resting the gun against the stone, the old fellow knelt down by my side
and, throwing his arms around me, began to blubber over me, exclaimi