So ended Hans’s narrative of his day’s adventures.
Chapter Thirty Five.
The elephant’s sleeping-roost.
The field-cornet was far from satisfied with his day’s work. His first attempt at elephant-hunting had proved a failure. Might it not be always so?
Notwithstanding the interest with which he listened to Hans’s narrative of the day’s adventures, he felt uneasy in his mind when he reflected upon his own.
The elephant had escaped so easily. Their bullets seemed to have injured him not the least. They had only served to render him furious, and dangerous. Though both had hit him in places where their wounds should have been mortal, no such effect was produced. The elephant seemed to go off as unscathed, as if they had fired only boiled peas at him!
Would it be always so?
True, they had given him but two shots. Two, if well directed, may bring down a cow-elephant and sometimes a bull, but oftener it requires ten times two before a strong old bull can be made to “bite the dust.”