“On arrival I found the old head man in a state painfully like that favoured by Greek art, dancing about in front of his ruined abodes as vigorously as though he had just been stung by a scorpion.
“I asked him what ailed him, and he burst out into a flood of abuse. He called me a Wizard, a Sham, a Fraud, a Bringer of bad luck! I had promised to kill the elephants, and I had so arranged things that the elephants had nearly killed him, etc.
“This, still smarting, or rather aching, as I was from that most terrific bump, was too much for my feelings, so I just made a rush at my friend, and getting him by the ear, I banged his head against the doorway of his own hut, which was all that was left of it.
“‘You wicked old scoundrel,’ I said, ‘you dare to complain about your own trifling inconveniences, when you gave me a rotten beam to sit on, and thereby delivered me to the fury of the elephant’ (bump! bump! bump!), ‘when your own wife’ (bump!) ‘has just been dragged out of her hut’ (bump!) ‘like a snail from its shell, and thrown by the Earth-shaker into a tree’ (bump! bump!).
“‘Mercy, my father, mercy!’ gasped the old fellow. ‘Truly I have done amiss—my heart tells me so.’
“‘I should hope it did, you old villain’ (bump!).
“‘Mercy, great white man! I thought the log was sound. But what says the unequalled chief—is the old woman, my wife, indeed dead? Ah, if she is dead all may yet prove to have been for the very best;’ and he clasped his hands and looked up piously to heaven, in which the moon was once more shining brightly.
“I let go his ear and burst out laughing, the whole scene and his devout aspirations for the decease of the partner of his joys, or rather woes, were so intensely ridiculous.
“‘No, you old iniquity,’ I answered; ‘I left her in the top of a thorn-tree, screaming like a thousand bluejays. The elephant put her there.’
“‘Alas! alas!’ he said, ‘surely the back of the ox is shaped to the burden. Doubtless, my father, she will come down when she is tired;’ and without troubling himself further about the matter, he began to blow at the smouldering embers of the fire.