letting fly
several arrows, and at last one of the great animals fell to the ground
dead, and the others retreated, leaving me free to come down from my
hiding-place and run back to tell my master of my success, for which I
was praised and regaled with good things. Then we went back to the
forest together and dug a mighty trench in which we buried the elephant
I had killed, in order that when it became a skeleton my master might
return and secure its tusks.

For two months I hunted thus, and no day passed without my securing an
elephant. Of course I did not always station myself in the same tree,
but sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. One morning as I
watched the coming of the elephants I was surprised to see that, instead
of passing the tree I was in, as they usually did, they paused, and
completely surrounded it, trumpeting horribly, and shaking the very
ground with their heavy tread, and when I saw that their eyes were fixed
upon me I was terrified, and my arrows dropped from my trembling hand. I
had indeed good reason for my terror when, an instant later, the largest
of the animals wound his trunk round the stem of my tree, and with one
mighty effort tore it up by the roots, bringing me to the ground
entangled in its branches. I thought now that my last hour was surely
come, but the huge creature, picking me up gently enough, set me upon
its back, where I clung more dead than alive, and followed by the whole
herd turned and crashed off into the dense forest. It seemed to me a
long time before I was once more set upon my feet by the elephant, and I
stood as if in a dream watching the herd, which turned and trampled off
in another direction, and were soon hidden in the dense underwood. Then,
recovering myself, I looked about me, and found that I was standing upon
the side of a great hill, strewn as far as I could see on either hand
with bones and tusks of elephants. "This then must be the elephants'
burying-place," I said to myself, "and they must have brought me here
that I might cease to persecute them, seeing that I want nothing but
their tusks, and here lie more than I could carry away in a lifetime."

Whereupon I turned and made for the city as fast as I could go, not
seeing a single elephant by the way, which convinced me that they had
retired deeper into the forest to leave the way open to the Ivory Hill,
and I did not know how sufficiently to admire their sagacity. After a
day and a night I reached