Then came the fight, and the saving of Andy and the German, almost at the last minute.

“Well, you certainly had nearly as many adventures as we did,” said Tom.  “But I guess they’re over now.”

But they were not.  For several days the airship sailed on over the jungles without making a descent.  Mr. and Mrs. Illingway wished to be landed at a white settlement where they had other missionary friends.  Tom would go with them.  This was done, and Tom and the others spent some time in this place, receiving so many kinds of thanks that they had to protest.

Andy and Herr Landbacher asked to be taken back to the coast, where they could get a steamer to America.  Andy was a very different lad now, and not the bully of old.

“Well, hadn’t we better be thinking of getting back home?” asked Tom one day.

“Not until we get some more ivory,” declared Mr. Durban.  “I think we’ll have to have another elephant hunt.”

They did, about a week later, and got some magnificent tusks.  Tom’s electric rifle did great work, to the wonder of Andy and Mr. Landbacher, who had never before seen such a curious weapon.  They also did some night hunting.

“But we haven’t got that pair of extra large tusks that I want,” said the old hunter, as he looked at the store of ivory accumulated after the last hunt.  “I want those, and then I’ll be satisfied.  There is one section of the country that we have not touched as yet, and I’d like to visit that.”

“Then let’s go,” proposed Tom, so, good-bys having been said to the missionaries, who sent greetings to their friends in America, and to the church people who had arranged for their rescue, the airship was once more sent to the deepest part of a certain jungle, where Mr. Durban hoped to get what he wanted.

They had another big hunt, but none of the elephants had any remarkable tusks, and the hunter was about to give up in despair, and call the expedition over, when one afternoon, as they were sailing along high enough to merely clear the tops of the trees, Tom heard a great crashing down below.

“There’s something there,” he called to Mr. Durban.  “Perhaps a small herd of elephants.  Shall we go down?”

Before Mr. Durban could answer there came into view, in a small clearing, an elephant of such size, and with such an enormous pair of tusks, that the young inventor and the old hunter could not repress cries of astonishment.

“There’s your beast!” said Tom.  “I’ll go down and you can pot him,” and, as he spoke, Tom stopped the propellers, so that the ship hung motionless in the air above where the gigantic brute was.

Suddenly, as though possessed by a fit of rage, the elephant rushed at a good-sized tree and began butting it with his head.  Then, winding his trunk around it he pulled it up by the roots, and began trampling on it out of a paroxysm of anger.

“A rogue elephant!” exclaimed Mr. Durban.  “Don’t go down if you value your life, or the safety of the airship.  If we attacked that brute on the ground, we would be the hunted instead of the hunters.  That’s a rogue elephant of the worst kind, and he’s at the height of his rage.”