“We were three parts round the glade now, and about fifty yards ahead was the single large dead thorn-tree against which the bull had been leaning.  I spurted for it; it was my last chance of safety.  But spurt as I would, it seemed hours before I got there.  Putting out my right hand, I swung round the tree, thus bringing myself face to face with the elephant.  I had not time to lift the rifle to fire, I had barely time to cock it, and run sideways and backward, when he was on to me.  Crash! he came, striking the tree full with his forehead.  It snapped like a carrot about forty inches from the ground.  Fortunately I was clear of the trunk, but one of the dead branches struck me on the chest as it went down and swept me to the ground.  I fell upon my back, and the elephant blundered past me as I lay.  More by instinct than anything else I lifted the rifle with one hand and pulled the trigger.  It exploded, and, as I discovered afterwards, the bullet struck him in the ribs.  But the recoil of the heavy rifle held thus was very severe; it bent my arm up, and sent the butt with a thud against the top of my shoulder and the side of my neck, for the moment quite paralyzing me, and causing the weapon to jump from my grasp.  Meanwhile the bull was rushing on.  He travelled for some twenty paces, and then suddenly he stopped.  Faintly I reflected that he was coming back to finish me, but even the prospect of imminent and dreadful death could not rouse me into action.  I was utterly spent; I could not move.

“Idly, almost indifferently, I watched his movements.  For a moment he stood still, next he trumpeted till the welkin rang, and then very slowly, and with great dignity, he knelt down.  At this point I swooned away.

“When I came to myself again I saw from the moon that I must have been insensible for quite two hours.  I was drenched with dew, and shivering all over.  At first I could not think where I was, when, on lifting my head, I saw the outline of the one-tusked bull still kneeling some five-and-twenty paces from me.  Then I remembered.  Slowly I raised myself, and was instantly taken with a violent sickness, the result of over-exertion, after which I very nearly fainted a second time.  Presently I grew better, and considered the position.  Two of the elephants were, as I knew, dead; but how about No. 3?  There he knelt in majesty in the lonely moonlight.  The question was, was he resting, or dead?  I rose on my hands and knees, loaded my rifle, and painfully crept a few paces nearer.  I could see his eye now, for the moonlight fell full upon it—­it was open, and rather prominent.  I crouched and watched; the eyelid did not move, nor did the great brown body, or the trunk, or the ear, or the tail—­nothing moved.  Then I knew that he must be dead.