The brushwood originally piled over the opening was only partially displaced when the elephant tumbled in, and creepers had grown over what was left, again concealing the trap.
As he became fully aware of the nature of his position, Challis grew more and more alarmed. He pictured himself sharing the fate of the elephant, starving by inches, and at last his bones lying with the skeleton on the floor of the pit.
His thoughts returned to Royce, waiting in the fort for the help that never came, and to his army, a few miles away, becoming more and more uneasy at the absence of their leader, perhaps quarrelling among themselves, breaking up and leaving the white man to his fate.
These terrible possibilities spurred him to action. Seizing one of the bones, he set to work to scrape at one side of the pit, with the idea of making a pathway.
The earth crumbled away, but was so friable that his work was like digging in sand; the space he hollowed out filled as fast as he scraped the earth away. Then he thought of driving the bones into the side to form steps, but the ground gave no hold sufficient to bear his weight.
These failures drove him to despair. Only one resource was left—to shout for help. His own men were too far away to hear him; the only persons within call were probably the Tubus from whom he had escaped. But he might as well be killed by Tubus as die of hunger and thirst in the pit. Already his mouth was parched through his exertions and his distress of mind.
He shouted again and again, until he was hoarse. There was no answer. Waiting awhile, he made his hands into a trumpet, and shouted still more loudly up through the opening. In the hollow pit the sound was tremendous. Still no one replied.
Feeling desperate, he seized his bone spade again and hacked feverishly at the floor.
"I must do something," he thought, "or I shall go mad."
With the earth he dug up he began to construct a pillar. But he soon realised that it would take many hours, perhaps days, to raise it to a sufficient height.