ts
which the animal was making to free itself, all the while talking to it,
and taunting it with spiteful speeches--for Ossaroo had been
particularly indignant at the loss of his skirt. When at length the
last twelve inches of the elephant's trunk was all that remained above
the surface, the shikaree could hold back no longer. Drawing his long
knife, he rushed out into the water; and, with one clean cut, severed
the muscular mass from its supporting stem, as a sickle would have
levelled some soft succulent weed.

The parted tube sank instantly to the bottom; a few red bubbles rose to
the surface; and these were the last tokens that proclaimed the exit of
that great elephant from the surface of the earth. It had gone down
into the deep sands, there to become fossilised--perhaps after the lapse
of many ages to be turned up again by the spade and pick-axe of some
wondering quarry-man.

Thus by a singular accident were our adventurers disembarrassed of a
disagreeable neighbour--or rather, a dangerous enemy--so dangerous,
indeed, that had not some chance of the kind turned up in their favour,
it is difficult to conjecture how they would have got rid of it. It was
no longer a question of pouring bullets into its body, and killing it in
that way. The spilling of their powder had spoiled that project; and
the three charges that still remained to them might not have been
sufficient with guns of so small a calibre as theirs.

No doubt in time such gallant hunters as Caspar and Ossaroo, and so
ingenious a contriver as Karl, would have devised some way to circumvent
the rogue, and make an end of him; but for all that they were very well
pleased at the strange circumstance that had relieved them of the
necessity, and they congratulated themselves on such a fortunate result.

On hearing them talking together, and perceiving that they were no
longer in the tree, Fritz, who had all this while been skulking only a
few paces from the spot, now emerged from his hiding-place, and came
running up. Little did Fritz suspect, while swimming across the straits
to rejoin his masters, that the huge quadruped which had so frequently
given him chase was at that moment so very near him; and that his own
claws, while cutting the water, came within an inch of scratching that
terrible trunk, now _truncated_ to a _frustrum_ of its former self!

But although Fritz had no knowledge of strange incident that had
occurred during his absence--and m