, but
he struck at me with his trunk as I passed round his head to give him
a finisher with the four-ounce rifle, which I had snatched from our
solitary gun-bearer.

My back was touching the jungle from which the rogue had just charged,
and I was almost in the act of firing through the temple of the still
struggling elephant, when I heard a tremendous crash in the jungle
behind me similar to the first, and the savage scream of an elephant.
I saw the ponderous foreleg cleave its way through the jungle directly
upon me. I threw my whole weight back against the thick rattans to avoid
him, and the next moment his foot was planted within an inch of mine.
His lofty head was passing over me in full charge at B., who was
unloaded, when, holding the four-ounce rifle perpendicularly, I fired
exactly under his throat. I thought he would fall and crush me, but this
shot was the only chance, as B. was perfectly helpless.

A dense cloud of smoke from the heavy charge of powder for the moment
obscured everything. I had jumped out of the way the instant after
firing. The elephant did not fall, but he had his death blow the
ball had severed his jugular, and the blood poured from the wound. He
stopped, but collecting his stunned energies he still blundered forward
towards B. He, however, avoided him by running to one side, and the
wounded brute staggered on through the jungle. We now loaded the guns;
the first rogue was quite dead, and we followed in pursuit of rogue
number two. We heard distant shots, and upon arriving at the spot we
found the gun-bearers. They had heard the wounded elephant crushing
through the jungle, and they had given him a volley just as he was
crossing the river over which the herd had escaped in the morning. They
described the elephant as perfectly helpless from his wound, and they
imagined that he had fallen in the thick bushes on the opposite bank
of the river. As I before mentioned, we could not cross the river on
account of the torrent, but in a few days it subsided, and the elephant
was found lying dead in the spot where they supposed he had fallen.

Thus happily ended the destruction of this notable pair; they had proved
themselves all that we had heard of them, and by their cunning dodge
of hiding in the thick jungle they had nearly made sure of us. We had
killed three rogues that morning, and we returned to our quarters well
satisfied.

Since that period I have somewhat thinned the number of rogues in