Feeling his knees growing weak with the reaction, Charlie staggered to his side and sank down. For a few moments neither boy spoke. There was something terrible about having killed such an animal, something that oppressed them both with a feeling that it was not yet over, that at any moment he might rise and come at them.
Charlie tried to speak, but his throat was dry. He had emptied his canteen over Amir, and caught that of Jack. Taking a swallow, he forced the water on Jack, and a moment later the boys rose to their feet.
"I'm kind of sorry," was all Jack could find to say, as he stared down at the brute who had lived so badly and died so well. Charlie shared his feeling, but a moment later a loud gun-shot came to his ears. He remembered the other party, and raising his gun, fired twice in the air.
"Buck up, old man," he said, with a shaky laugh. "The General will be here in a minute, and he'll give us what for. The old boy died game, Jack—but he had it coming to him. Just remember Mowbray."
Jack nodded without speaking. Then, from the forest, not behind but ahead of them, broke a group of yelling Masai headed by Bakari, running on the spoor of the rogue elephant. Behind, trying to hold them back from too close pursuit, ran the figure of Schoverling.
Both explorer and natives paused together as they grasped the scene before them. Jack and Charlie stood at the side of the dead beast, still pale with the strain of their terrific battle. Behind lay the motionless form of Amir Ali, his beard sticking up in the sunlight, the sliver of ivory by his head, while a few yards away the forgotten fire sent up a thin wreath of smoke into the air.
Schoverling was the first to break that awed silence, as on his trail appeared Guru, von Hofe, and the rest, all at full speed. While they came up and paused in amazement, the explorer advanced and held out his hand.
"I congratulate you," he said huskily. Meeting his eye, the two boys found there only honest admiration, as from man to man, and they shook hands without a word. Then von Hofe joined them, shaking hands with a flood of excited German through which broke no word of English, and the boys laughed.
"We thought you'd be pretty sore, General," admitted Charlie a moment later, "about our going off that way. But, honest, we didn't mean to—except at first."
"I understand, boys," smiled the bronzed explorer. "But never mind that—Akram told me all about it when we began to get anxious. We thought you had gone right on the trail of the elephant, which only led us out here, so we kept on as fast as we could. And this is the great Rogue Elephant! How on earth did you boys kill him? Is Amir dead?"