When
I had informed him, he commended my dexterity, and caressed me highly.
We went afterward together to the forest, where we dug a hole for the
elephant, my patron designing to return when it was rotten, and take
his teeth to trade with.
I continued this employment for two months. One morning, as I looked
for the elephants, I perceived with extreme amazement that, instead of
passing by me across the forest as usual, they stopped, and came to me
with a horrible noise, and in such numbers that the plain was covered
and shook under them. They surrounded the tree in which I was
concealed, with their trunks uplifted, and all fixed their eyes upon
me. At this alarming spectacle I continued immovable, and was so much
terrified that my bow and arrows fell out of my hand.
My fears were not without cause; for after the elephants had stared
upon me some time, one of the largest of them put his trunk round the
foot of the tree, plucked it up, and threw it on the ground. I fell
with the tree, and the elephant, taking me up with his trunk, laid me
on his back, where I sat more like one dead than alive, with my
quiver on my shoulder. He put himself at the head of the rest, who
followed him in line one after the other, carried me a considerable
way, then laid me down on the ground, and retired with all his
companions. After having lain some time, and seeing the elephants
gone, I got up, and found I was upon a long and broad hill, almost
covered with the bones and teeth of elephants.
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