I heard the crack of a gun; it was B.'s last barrel.

I felt a spongy weight strike my heel, and, turning quickly heels over head, I rolled a few paces and regained my feet.

That last shot had floored him just as he was upon me; the end of his trunk had fallen upon my heel.

Still he was not dead, but he struck at me with his trunk as I passed round his head to give him a finisher with the four-ounce rifle, which I had snatched from our solitary gun-bearer.
My back was touching the jungle from which the rogue had just charged, and I was almost in the act of firing through the temple of the still struggling elephant, when I heard a tremendous crash in the jungle behind me similar to the first, and the savage scream of an elephant.
I saw the ponderous foreleg cleave its way through the jungle directly upon me.

I threw my whole weight back against the thick rattans to avoid him, and the next moment his foot was planted within an inch of mine.
His lofty head was passing over me in full charge at B., who was unloaded, when, holding the four-ounce rifle perpendicularly, I fired exactly under his throat.