The children were especially pleased that the intelligent beast understood everything that was required of him, and that he not only paid the greatest attention to every command or request, but to every sign given him. Elephants far outstrip all other animals in this respect, and King greatly surpassed Saba, who only wagged his tail at every command and threat from Nell, and then, in the end, did just what he pleased.
For instance, after several weeks King observed that the person to be implicitly obeyed was Stasch, and the person who engaged the attention of every one was Nell. And thus he obeyed Stasch’s commands the most readily, and loved Nell the dearest. He did not care much for Kali and ignored Mea.
After Stasch had prepared the blast, he pushed it into the deepest crack, closed the opening with clay, and only left a tiny hole, out of which hung a fuse of twisted palm threads rubbed with ground powder. At last the decisive moment came. Stasch lighted the powdered thread himself, then ran for his life toward the tree, in which he had previously shut every one. Nell was afraid that King might become greatly alarmed, but the boy calmed her by saying that, in the first place, he had chosen a day when there had been a heavy thunderstorm in the morning, and, secondly, that wild elephants must have heard the peals of thunder more than once when the elementary forces of the heavens had been let loose over the jungle. But nevertheless they sat there with beating hearts, counting the seconds. At last a terrible noise shook the air. The bamboo-tree trembled from top to bottom, and the remains of the mold still left in the tree fell down on their heads. The next moment Stasch sprang out, and avoiding the bends in the gorge, made a straight line for the passage.
The results of the explosion were extraordinary. One-half of the chalk wall had broken into tiny bits, the other into larger and smaller blocks of stone, which the force of the blast had thrown and scattered quite a distance.
The elephant was free.
The happy boy at once ran back up the hill, where he met Nell with Mea and Kali. King had certainly been frightened and had drawn back close to the edge of the ravine, where he stood with upturned trunk, looking toward the direction from which such an unusual clap of thunder had broken out. But as soon as Nell began to call him he stopped moving his ears from fright, and when she ran down to him through the newly opened passage he became perfectly calm. But the horses were more frightened than King, and two of them had fled into the jungle, so that Kali could not find them again until toward sunset. On the same day Nell led King back “into the world.” The colossus followed her obediently, like a small dog. Then he took a bath in the stream, after which he thought of supper; so leaning his head against a large sycamore-tree, he bent it like a weak reed, and devoted all his attention to chewing up the fruit and leaves.
In the evening he returned punctually to the tree, and sticking his great nose into the opening every minute, he searched so carefully and persistently for Nell that at last Stasch was obliged to give him a good smack on his trunk.
Kali was the most pleased with the result of the day, for now he was relieved from the task of collecting food for the giant, which had not been at all an easy matter. While preparing a fire to cook the supper Stasch and Nell heard him singing a new hymn of joy:
“The great man kill people and lions. Yah! Yah! Great man break up rock. Yah! Elephant breaks his own trees, and Kali can idle and eat. Yah! Yah!”
The “massika” or rainy season was nearly over. Of course there were still dark and rainy days, but also some very fine days. Stasch now decided to move over to the mountain, which Linde had told him about, and this plan was carried out soon after King’s release. Nell’s health no longer deterred him, for she was now decidedly better.