interrogative speech, the shikaree had answered it.

"He-ho!" he exclaimed. "Goot! vair goot!--praise to the God of the
Great Gangee! See, sahibs, the rogue he go down, down--he sinkee in de
quicksand that near swalley Ossaroo; he-ho; sinkee! he sinkee!"

Karl and Caspar easily comprehended the meaning of Ossaroo's broken but
exultant speeches. Bending their eyes on the brute below, and watching
its movements, they at once perceived that the shikaree had spoken the
truth. The elephant was evidently sinking in the quicksand!

They had noticed that when it first entered the bed of the stream, the
water had not reached far above its knees. Now it was up to its sides,
and slowly but gradually rising higher. Its violent struggles,
moreover--the partial and alternate raising of its shoulders, its
excited shrieks--and the proboscis, rapidly extended now to this side,
now to that, as if searching to grasp some support--all proved the truth
of Ossaroo's assertion--the rogue was sinking in the quicksand. And
rapidly was the creature going down. Before the spectators had been
watching it five minutes, the water lapped up nearly to the level of its
back, and then inch by inch, and foot by foot, it rose higher, until the
round shoulders were submerged, and only the head and its long
trumpet-like extension appeared above the surface.

Soon the shoulders ceased to play; and the vast body exhibited no other
motion, save that gentle descent by which it was being drawn down into
the bowels of the earth!

The trunk still kept up its vibratory movement, now violently beating
the water into foam, and now feebly oscillating, all the while breathing
forth its accents of agony.

At length the upturned head and smooth protuberant jaws sank beneath the
surface; and only the proboscis appeared, standing erect out of the
water like a gigantic Bologna sausage. It had ceased to give out the
shrill trumpet scream; but a loud breathing could still be heard,
interrupted at intervals by a gurgling sound.

Karl and Caspar kept their seats upon the tree, looking down upon the
strange scene with feelings of awe depicted in their faces. Not so the
shikaree, who was no longer aloft. As soon as he had seen the elephant
fairly locked in the deadly embrace of that quicksand that had so nearly
engulfed his own precious person, he lowered himself nimbly down from
the branches.

For some moments he stood upon the bank, watching the futile effor