So the tiger dug his claws on the elephant's head, paw over paw, and tried to climb up to the elephant's back. Maddened with the pain, the elephant began to rock and sway. The two men on the box could not use their guns again, as they had to clutch the box with both hands, or else they would have been thrown to the ground--then the tiger would have fallen on them and killed them in an instant. The two men could do nothing to save themselves.
The fifty-eight other hunters had now reloaded their guns. Those who were nearest pointed their guns at the tiger.
"Don't shoot!" the rajah cried out. "You might hit the two men!"
That was quite true. For now the elephant was so maddened with terror and with the pain, that he was swaying, bucking, rearing. Nobody could take correct aim at the tiger.
Span by span the tiger climbed up, nearer and nearer to the box. The two helpless men in it saw the tiger's flaming eyes a yard in front of them, and they saw the tiger's fangs crashing together as if to crunch their bones.
A minute more, and these two men must die--in sight of the fifty-eight other hunters.
Then again something wonderful happened. The men could do nothing. But not so the elephant! He could do something!
The elephant recovered from his fright. He remembered all the clever tricks he had learned in his youth in the jungle, like Salar, of whom I have told you in Book I. This elephant remembered what he too could do with his trunk.
So the elephant began to curl his trunk around the tiger's neck. The tiger _felt_ the end of the trunk creeping around his neck.
Then the tiger knew that in the next minute the elephant's trunk would grip him by the neck and tear him off from the elephant's head; and then the elephant would bring him to the ground and trample him to death.
The tiger did not wait for that. He had scorned the sixty men--some of whom were the best hunters of the world--but he was too wise to scorn the elephant. And the tiger knew that by this time his wife must be safe.
So the tiger dropped to the ground, ran past the rear of the elephant, and vanished into the bushes. And while he did that, not one of the hunters had time even to point a gun at him.
Once only did the hunters catch sight of the tiger again. After the tigress had escaped, she must have worked her way around to the thick bushes behind the hunters; and there she must have been waiting for her husband. A few minutes later the men caught a glimpse of the tiger and tigress, husband and wife, walking together leisurely beyond those bushes, across a short open space, toward the next jungle. There they would live in the future.