Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/283

 Rh Saying this, she took hold of the end of the trunk with one hand and drew it to Stas, while she waved the other hand right and left, saying at the same time to the elephant:

"Elephant! Swing Stas also."

The wise animal surmised from her gesture what she wanted of him, and Stas, caught by the belt of his trousers, in one moment found himself in mid-air. In this there was such a strange and amusing contrast between his still angry mien and this rocking above the earth that the little "Mzimu" began to laugh until the tears came, clapping all the time her hands and shouting as before:

"More! More!"

And as it is impossible to preserve an appropriate dignity and deliver a lecture on deportment at a time when one is suspended from the end of an elephant's trunk and involuntarily goes through the motions of a pendulum, the boy in the end began to laugh also. But after a certain time, noticing that the motions of the trunk were slackening and the elephant intended to deposit him on the ground, a new idea unexpectedly occurred to him, and, taking advantage of the moment at which he found himself close to the prodigious ear, he grabbed it with both hands and in the twinkling of an eye climbed over it onto the head and sat on the elephant's neck.

"Aha!" he exclaimed from above to Nell; "let him understand that he must obey me."

And he began to stroke the elephant's head with his palm with the mien of a ruler and master.

"Good!" cried Nell from below, "but how will you get down now?"

"That is small trouble," Stas answered.

And slinging his legs over the elephant's forehead, he