On he came as docilely as any Indian elephant used for carrying teak logs, passing through the centre of the host up a wide lane which had been left, I suppose for his convenience, and intelligently avoiding the pitfalls filled with dead.  I thought that he would stop among the first ranks.  But not so.  Slackening his pace to a walk he marched forwards towards our fortifications.  Now, of course, I saw my chance and made sure that my double-barrelled elephant rifle was ready and that Hans held a second rifle, also double-barrelled and of similar calibre, full-cocked in such a position that I could snatch it from him in a moment.

“I am going to kill that elephant,” I said.  “Let no one else fire.  Stand still and you shall see the god Jana die.”

Still the enormous beast floundered forward; up to that moment I had never realized how truly huge it was, not even when it stood over me in the moonlight about to crush me with its foot.  Of this I am sure, that none to equal it ever lived in Africa, at least in any times of which I have knowledge.

“Fire, Baas,” whispered Hans, “it is near enough.”

But like the Frenchman and the cock pheasant, I determined to wait until it stopped, wishing to finish it with a single ball, if only for the prestige of the thing.

At length it did stop and, opening its cavern of a mouth, lifted its great trunk and trumpeted, while Simba, standing up in his chair, began to shout out some command to us to surrender to the god Jana, “the Invincible, the Invulnerable.”

“I will show you if you are invulnerable, my boy,” said I to myself, glancing round to make sure that Hans had the second rifle ready and catching sight of Ragnall and Harut and all the White Kendah standing up in their trenches, breathlessly awaiting the end, as were the Black Kendah a few hundred yards away.  Never could there have been a fairer shot and one more certain to result in a fatal wound.  The brute’s head was up and its mouth was open.  All I had to do was to send a hard-tipped bullet crashing through the palate to the brain behind.  It was so easy that I would have made a bet that I could have finished him with one hand tied behind me.

I lifted the heavy rifle.  I got the sights dead on to a certain spot at the back of that red cave.  I pressed the trigger; the charge boomed—­and nothing happened!  I heard no bullet strike and Jana did not even take the trouble to close his mouth.

An exclamation of “O-oh!” went up from the watchers.  Before it had died away the second bullet followed the first, with the same result or rather lack of result, and another louder “O-oh!” arose.  Then Jana tranquilly shut his mouth, having finished trumpeting, and as though to give me a still better target, turned broadside on and stood quite still.

With an inward curse I snatched the second rifle and aiming behind the ear at a spot which long experience told me covered the heart let drive again, first one barrel and then the other.