Chapter 14

The general fired both barrels of his first gun. One shot failed; but the other wounded the tiger in the shoulder, and only served to make him more savage; though, instead of springing upwards, he lay thus on the defensive, gathered up in a round ball. The major, an enormously fat man, weighing more than twenty stone, now leant over the _howdah_ to take a cool and deliberate aim; but the elephant in the same moment happened to bend his fore-knees, for the claws of the tiger were inserted in his trunk. Losing all b…