In we went and were presently floundering among the loose stones at the
bottom of the river, which was nowhere over four feet deep, with Jana
splashing after us not more than five yards behind. I twisted myself
round and fired at him with the rifle. Whether I hit him or no I could
not say, but he stopped for a few seconds, perhaps because he remembered
the effect of a similar explosion upon his eye, which gave us a trifling
start. Then he came on again in his steam-engine fashion.

When we were about in the middle of the river the inevitable happened.
The camel fell, pitching us over its head into the stream. Still
clinging to the rifle I picked myself up and began half to swim half to
wade towards the farther shore, catching hold of Hans with my free hand.
In a moment Jana was on to that camel. He gored it with his tusks, he
trampled it with his feet, he got it round the neck with his trunk,
dragging nearly the whole bulk of it out of the water. Then he set to
work to pound it down into the mud and stones at the bottom of the river
with such a persistent thoroughness, that he gave us time to reach
the other bank and climb up a stout tree which grew there, a sloping,
flat-topped kind of tree that was fortunately easy to ascend, at least
for a man. Here we sat gasping, perhaps about thirty feet above the
ground level, and waited.

Presently Jana, having finished with the camel, followed us, and
without any difficulty located us in that tree. He walked all round it
considering the situation. Then he wound his huge trunk about the bole
of the tree and, putting out his strength, tried to pull it over. It was
an anxious moment, but this particular child of the forest had not grown
there for some hundreds of years, withstanding all the shocks of wind,
weather and water, in order to be laid low by an elephant, however
enormous. It shook a little--no more. Abandoning this attempt as futile,
Jana next began to try to dig it up by driving his tusk under its roots.
Here, too, he failed because they grew among stones which evidently
jarred him.

Ceasing from these agricultural efforts with a deep rumble of rage, he
adopted yet a third expedient. Rearing his huge bulk into the air he
brought down his forefeet with all the tremendous weight of his great
body behind them on to the sloping trunk of the tree just below where
the branches sprang, perhaps twelve or thirteen feet above the ground.
The shock was so heavy that for a mom