I was carrying a light double-barrelled gun, but I now reached back my hand to exchange it for my four-ounce rifle.

Little did I expect the sudden effect produced by the additional weight of the heavy weapon.

The treacherous surface suddenly gave way, and in an instant I was waist deep in mud.

The noise that I had made in falling had at once aroused the elephant, and, true to his character of a rogue, he immediately advanced with a shrill trumpet towards me.

His ears were cocked, and his tail was well up; but instead of charging, as rogues generally do, with his head thrown rather back and held high, which renders a front shot very uncertain, he rather lowered his head, and splashed towards me through the mud, apparently despising my diminutive appearance.
I thought it was all up with me this time; I was immovable in my bed of mud, and, instead of the clean brown barrel that I could usually trust to in an extremity, I raised a mass of mud to my shoulder, which encased my rifle like a flannel bag.