we might open fire on the brute.
Whether we succeeded in killing him or not, we might at all events
divert his attention from Ossaroo, and perhaps hinder him from thinking
of the plan you speak of. We might go down and get our guns. What is
to hinder us?--the elephant is too busy to notice us."

"True--an excellent idea of yours, brother Caspar."

"Well, then, to put it in execution. I shall slip down to the ground;
you follow to the lowest branch, and I can hand the guns up to you.
Keep steady, and don't you fear, Ossy!" added the young hunter in a
louder voice, addressing himself to the shikaree. "We'll fetch him away
from you directly--we'll tickle him with an ounce or two of lead through
that thick hide of his."

So saying, Caspar commenced letting himself rapidly down from branch to
branch, Karl following more leisurely.

Caspar had got upon the lowest limb of the tree, and Karl on that
immediately above it, when a loud crash, accompanied by a piercing
shriek, arrested the progress of both, causing them suddenly to turn
their faces towards the obelisk. During the short time that their eyes
had been averted from it, a complete change had taken place in that
curious tableau. Instead of a tall column of stone, standing
twenty-feet perpendicular, the same column was now seen lying along the
earth in a nearly horizontal position, with a huge mass of broken boughs
and branches of trees crushed under its top. Near its base, now
upturned and standing almost vertically, was the elephant, no longer on
its hind feet, nor yet on all fours, but down upon its back, kicking its
huge hoofs in the air, and making the most stupendous efforts to recover
its legs. Ossaroo was nowhere to be seen!

The contingency dreaded by Karl had come to pass. The elephant, finding
it impossible to reach the shikaree with its trunk--and no doubt judging
by the "feel" that the rock was not immobile--had at length dropped down
on all fours and, placing its broad shoulder against it, backed by the
enormous weight of its bulky body, had sent the column crashing among
the tops of a chestnut tree growing near--the trunk of which, yielding
to the weight, gave way with a crash, and trunk, limbs, and branches
were all borne downward to the earth!

The elephant itself, not calculating that it should find the task so
easy of performance, had fallen at the same time--its cumbrous body
losing balance by the impetus which it had thrown into the eff