e over on to its top, and when I arrived upon the scene the people
who had been sleeping there were bumbling about inside like bees
disturbed at night, while two more were crushed flat, and a third had
all its side torn out. Oddly enough, however, nobody was hurt, though
several people had a narrow escape of being trodden to death.

"On arrival I found the old head man in a state painfully like that
favoured by Greek art, dancing about in front of his ruined abodes as
vigorously as though he had just been stung by a scorpion.

"I asked him what ailed him, and he burst out into a flood of abuse.
He called me a Wizard, a Sham, a Fraud, a Bringer of bad luck! I had
promised to kill the elephants, and I had so arranged things that the
elephants had nearly killed him, etc.

"This, still smarting, or rather aching, as I was from that most
terrific bump, was too much for my feelings, so I just made a rush at
my friend, and getting him by the ear, I banged his head against the
doorway of his own hut, which was all that was left of it.

"'You wicked old scoundrel,' I said, 'you dare to complain about your
own trifling inconveniences, when you gave me a rotten beam to sit on,
and thereby delivered me to the fury of the elephant' (_bump! bump!
bump!_), 'when your own wife' (_bump!_) 'has just been dragged out
of her hut' (_bump!_) 'like a snail from its shell, and thrown by the
Earth-shaker into a tree' (_bump! bump!_).

"'Mercy, my father, mercy!' gasped the old fellow. 'Truly I have done
amiss--my heart tells me so.'

"'I should hope it did, you old villain' (_bump!_).

"'Mercy, great white man! I thought the log was sound. But what says the
unequalled chief--is the old woman, my wife, indeed dead? Ah, if she is
dead all may yet prove to have been for the very best;' and he clasped
his hands and looked up piously to heaven, in which the moon was once
more shining brightly.

"I let go his ear and burst out laughing, the whole scene and his devout
aspirations for the decease of the partner of his joys, or rather woes,
were so intensely ridiculous.

"'No, you old iniquity,' I answered; 'I left her in the top of a
thorn-tree, screaming like a thousand bluejays. The elephant put her
there.'

"'Alas! alas!' he said, 'surely the back of the ox is shaped to the
burden. Doubtless, my father, she will come down when she is tired;' and
without troubling himself further about the matter, he began to blow at
the smouldering ember