“No danger of that,” said Caspar, interrupting him; “it stands firm enough. True, I see it shake a little, but only a very little; and that only when the brute springs up against it. No danger, I should think!”
“But I fear there is clanger,” rejoined Karl, in a tone of undiminished anxiety. “Not,” added he, “so long as the elephant acts as he is doing; but he may not continue thus. These creatures are wonderfully sagacious; and if he only perceives that the pillar moves under his weight, a new idea may get into his brain, and then it will be all up with Ossaroo.”
“Ha! I begin to comprehend you,” said Caspar, beginning to share the alarm of his brother. “There is danger in that. What is to be done? If we only had our guns up here, we might open fire on the brute. Whether we succeeded in killing him or not, we might at all events divert his attention from Ossaroo, and perhaps hinder him from thinking of the plan you speak of. We might go down and get our guns. What is to hinder us?—the elephant is too busy to notice us.”
“True—an excellent idea of yours, brother Caspar.”
“Well, then, to put it in execution. I shall slip down to the ground; you follow to the lowest branch, and I can hand the guns up to you. Keep steady, and don’t you fear, Ossy!” added the young hunter in a louder voice, addressing himself to the shikaree. “We’ll fetch him away from you directly—we’ll tickle him with an ounce or two of lead through that thick hide of his.”
So saying, Caspar commenced letting himself rapidly down from branch to branch, Karl following more leisurely.
Caspar had got upon the lowest limb of the tree, and Karl on that immediately above it, when a loud crash, accompanied by a piercing shriek, arrested the progress of both, causing them suddenly to turn their faces towards the obelisk. During the short time that their eyes had been averted from it, a complete change had taken place in that curious tableau. Instead of a tall column of stone, standing twenty-feet perpendicular, the same column was now seen lying along the earth in a nearly horizontal position, with a huge mass of broken boughs and branches of trees crushed under its top. Near its base, now upturned and standing almost vertically, was the elephant, no longer on its hind feet, nor yet on all fours, but down upon its back, kicking its huge hoofs in the air, and making the most stupendous efforts to recover its legs. Ossaroo was nowhere to be seen!
The contingency dreaded by Karl had come to pass. The elephant, finding it impossible to reach the shikaree with its trunk—and no doubt judging by the “feel” that the rock was not immobile—had at length dropped down on all fours and, placing its broad shoulder against it, backed by the enormous weight of its bulky body, had sent the column crashing among the tops of a chestnut tree growing near—the trunk of which, yielding to the weight, gave way with a crash, and trunk, limbs, and branches were all borne downward to the earth!
The elephant itself, not calculating that it should find the task so easy of performance, had fallen at the same time—its cumbrous body losing balance by the impetus which it had thrown into the effort. In short, of the four objects that formed the tableau—rock and tree, quadruped and man—not one was standing any longer in its place—for it is superfluous to say that Ossaroo had gone down with the obelisk.
But where was Ossaroo? That was the question that occurred to both Karl and Caspar.