"You can't make it! Go back!"
Whether or not Teddy heard and understood, did not matter, for at that moment the view of the plucky lad was shut off by the elephants forming their charging line into crescent shape.
"Emperor!" he called in a shrill penetrating voice. But in the dust of the charge he could not make out which one was Emperor, yet he continued calling lustily.
"Emperor!"
Phil threw his hands above his head as was his wont when desirous of having the old elephant pick him up.
Right across the center of the crescent careened a great hulking figure, uttering loud trumpetings—trumpetings that were taken up by his companions until the very ground seemed to shake.
Phil's back was half toward the big elephant, and in the noise he did not distinguish a familiar note in the call.
All at once he felt himself violently jerked from the ground. The lad was certain that his time had come. But out of that cloud of dust, in which those who looked, believed that the little Circus Boy had gone down to his death, Phil Forrest rose right up into the air and was dropped unharmed to the back of old Emperor.
For the moment he was so dizzy that he was unable to make up his mind what had happened or where he was. Then it all came to him. He was on Emperor's back.
"Hurrah!" shouted Phil. "Good old Emperor! Steady, steady,
Emperor!
That's a good fellow."