ay with the elephant. The elephant is not made by
God that could run away with him if he did not consent to the elopement.
And, by thunder, there he is!"

There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass,
about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering
vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with
his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship's bowsprit, and trumpeting like
the trumpet of doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal
sat President Sunday with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading the
animal to a furious speed with some sharp object in his hand.

"Stop him!" screamed the populace. "He'll be out of the gate!"

"Stop a landslide!" said the keeper. "He is out of the gate!"

And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced that
the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological
Gardens, and was careening down Albany Street like a new and swift sort
of omnibus.

"Great Lord!" cried Bull, "I never knew an elephant could go so fast.
Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in sight."

As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had vanished,
Syme felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in the cages which
they passed. Afterwards he thought it queer that he should have seen
them so clearly. He remembered especially seeing pelicans, with their
preposterous, pendant throats. He wondered why the pelican was the
symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity
to admire a pelican. He remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge
yellow beak with a small bird tied on behind it. The whole gave him a
sensation, the vividness of which he could not explain, that Nature was
always making quite mysterious jokes. Sunday had told them that they
would understand him when they had understood the stars. He wondered
whether even the archangels understood the hornbill.

The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the
elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of
the streets. This time Sunday did not turn round, but offered them the
solid stretch of his unconscious back, which maddened them, if possible,
more than his previous mockeries. Just before they came to Baker Street,
however, he was seen to throw something far up into the air, as a boy
does a ball meaning to catch it again. But at their rate of racing