This time the result was nothing like so encouraging. The great brute wheeled round with astonishing quickness, and with a trumpet that sounded to Guy like the scream of a dozen railway engines rolled into one, charged instantly. There was nothing for it but flight; and good runner as Guy was, he always said afterwards that never had he sprinted so fast as he did over the fifty yards of open ground across which the wounded bull now chased him. Poeskop, who was twenty or thirty yards behind as Guy fired, had turned short as the beast turned, and doubled back into some bush, and for the present was safe; but Guy, with the elephant following upon his heels, trumpeting wickedly as it ran, felt that he was in a very tight place indeed. Nearer and nearer came the great brute. The lad felt that each moment the monster’s trunk would come slipping round his waist. A clump of trees and some bush stood just before him. How he accomplished it he never quite knew; but he reached the shelter, dodged round a tree like a rabbit, slipped behind some bush, and crouched close to the earth. As he expected, the elephant thundered on; and before it could check its impetus and turn, Guy had crept farther away. But the bull had by no means yet done with him. It turned short in its tracks so soon as it had pulled up, and, with ears held at right angles to its head, looking, as Guy in his place of concealment thought to himself, for all the world like a pair of mighty sails hoisted to the breeze, and its trunk searching the air closely for the scent of its enemies, trotted quickly back. If by chance the beast got his wind, Guy knew quite well that he would have to sustain another charge, and the monster would be on top of him. Suddenly the brute halted thirty yards away from where the lad crouched, and again carefully tested the atmosphere with its trunk. Poor though its vision is, there is no creature in the world which has such marvellous scenting powers.