When Dermot had finished his unpleasant task, it still remained to bind the buck’s legs together and tie him on to Badshah’s back.  For this he would need cords; but he relied on the inexhaustible jungle to supply him with these.

While searching for the udal tree whose inner bark would furnish him with long, tough strips, he heard a crashing in the undergrowth not far away, but, concluding that it was caused by Badshah, he did not trouble to look round.  Having got the cordage that he needed, he turned to go back to the spot where he had left the kakur.  As he fought his way impatiently through the thorny tangled vegetation, he again heard the breaking of twigs and the trampling down of the undergrowth.  He glanced in the direction of the sound, expecting to see Badshah appear.

To his dismay his eyes fell on a strange elephant, a large double-tusker.  It had caught sight of him and, contrary to the usual habit of its kind, was advancing towards him instead of retreating.  This showed that it was the most terrible of all wild animals, a man-killing “rogue” elephant, than which there is no more vicious or deadly brute on the earth.

Dermot instantly recognised his danger.  It was very great.  His rifle was some distance away, and before he could reach it the tusker would probably overtake him.  He stopped and stood still, hoping that the rogue had not caught sight of him.  But he saw at once that there was no doubt of this.  The brute had its murderous little eyes fixed on him and was quickening its pace.  The undergrowth that almost held the man a prisoner was no obstacle to this powerful beast.

Dermot realised that it meant to attack him.  His heart nearly stopped, for he knew the terrible death that awaited him.  He had seen the crushed bodies, battered to pulp and with the limbs torn away, of men killed by rogue elephants.  The only hope of escape, a faint one, lay in flight.

Madly he strove to tear himself free from the clutching thorns and the grip of the entangling creepers that held him.  He flung all his weight into his efforts to fight his way out clear of the malignant vegetation, that seemed a cruel, living thing striving to drag him to his death.  The elephant saw his desperate struggles.  It trumpeted shrilly and, with head held high, trunk curled up, and the lust of murder in its heart, it charged.

The tangled network of interlaced undergrowth parted like gossamer before it.  Small trees went down and the tallest bushes were trampled flat; the stoutest creepers broke like pack-thread before its weight.

Dermot tore himself free from the clutch of the last clinging, curving thorns that rent his garments and cut deep into his flesh.  Gaining comparatively open ground he ran for his life.  But he had lost all sense of direction and could not remember where his rifle stood.  Escape seemed hopeless.  He knew only too well that in the jungle a pursuing elephant will always overtake a fleeing man.  The trees offered no refuge, for the lowest branches were high above his reach and the trunks too thick and straight to climb.  He fled, knowing that each moment might be his last.  A false step, a trip over a root or a creeper and he was lost.  He would be gored, battered to death, stamped out of existence, torn limb from limb by the vicious brute.