Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/298

 tusks, with a most graceful curve, which appeared about eight feet long—the flukes of the grapnel were firmly fastened between them.

The animal tried in vain with his trunk to loose the cord that bound him to the car.

"Go ahead cheerily!" cried Joe delighted, and doing his best to urge on this strange turn-out. "Here is quite a new way of traveling. Talk of a horse, indeed! An elephant, if you please."

"But where will he lead us to?" asked Kennedy, shifting his gun from hand to hand.

"He will take us wherever he likes, my dear Dick; have a little patience."

"Wig-a-more! wig-a-more! as the Scotch peasants say," cried the delighted Joe. "Go on, go on."

ThThe [sic] animal broke into a rapid gallop, he flung his trunk from right to left, and in his boundings he gave some violent shocks to the car. The doctor, ax in hand, was ready to cut the rope if occasion demanded.

"But," said he, "we will not give up our anchor till the last moment."

This race at the tail of an elephant lasted nearly an hour and a half. The animal did not appear in any way fatigued. These enormous quadrupeds can keep up a trot for a considerable time, and day after day they accomplish immense distances, like the whales, whose size and speed they possess.

"I believe it is a whale we have harpooned," said Joe, "and we are only imitating the maneuvers of the whalers when fishing."

But a change in the nature of the ground obliged the doctor to modify his mode of progression.

A thick wood appeared towards the north of the prairie, about three miles distant; it then became absolutely necessary that the balloon should be separated from its conductor.

So Kennedy was assigned the duty of stopping the elephant. He shouldered his carbine, but his position was not favorable to strike the animal successfully. The first ball fired at the skull was flattened as if against an iron plate. The elephant did not appear the least inconvenienced. At the sound of the discharge he accelerated his