Page:Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle.djvu/210

200 hunter was about to give up in despair, and call the expedition over, when one afternoon, as they were sailing along high enough to merely clear the tops of the trees, Tom heard a great crashing down below.

"There's something there," he called to Mr. Durban. "Perhaps a small herd of elephants. Shall we go down?"

Before Mr. Durban could answer there came into view, in a small clearing, an elephant of such size, and with such an enormous pair of tusks, that the young inventor and the old hunter could not repress cries of astonishment.

"There's your beast!" said Tom. "I'll go down and you can pot him," and, as he spoke, Tom stopped the propellers, so that the ship hung motionless in the air above where the gigantic brute was.

Suddenly, as though possessed by a fit of rage, the elephant rushed at a good-sized tree and began butting it with his head. Then, winding his trunk around it he pulled it up by the roots, and began trampling on it in a paroxysm of anger.

"A rogue elephant!" exclaimed Mr. Durban. "Don't go down if you value your life, or the safety of the airship. If we attacked that brute on the ground, we would be the hunted instead of