3IO THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



Elsewhere I have spoken at length of Gunda's mind and 

 manners. He went steadily from bad to worse; but we never 

 once really punished him. The time was when there was only 

 one man in the world whom he feared, and would obey, and 

 that was his keeper, Walter Thuman. I have seen that great 

 dangerous beast cower and quake with fear, and back off into 

 a comer, when Thuman's powerful voice yelled at him, and 

 admonished him to behave himself. But all that ended on the 

 day that he "got" Thuman. 



On that fateful afternoon, with no visitors present, Thuman 

 opened the outside door, took Gunda by the left ear, and with 

 his steel-shod elephant hook ill his left hand started to lead 

 the huge animal out into his yard. Just inside the doorway 

 Gunda thought he saw his chance, and he took it. 



With a fierce sidewise thrust of his head he struck his keeper 

 squarely on the shoulder and sent him plunging to the floor in 

 the stall comer nearest him. Then, instantly he wheeled 

 about and started to follow up his attack. In the fall Thuman's 

 hook flew from his hand. 



At first Gunda tried to step on him, but he lay so close 

 into the comer that the elephant could not plant his feet so 

 that they would do execution. Then he tried to kneel upon 

 the keeper, with the same result. 



Thuman struggled more closely into the comer, and tried 

 hard to pull himself intq the refuse box, through its low door; 

 but with his trunk Gunda caught him by a leg and dragged him 

 back. Then he made a fierce downward thrust with his tusks, 

 which were nearly four feet long, to transfix his intended 

 victim. 



His left tusk struck the steel-clad wall and shattered into 

 fragments, half way up. The resounding crash of that breaking 

 tusk was what saved Thuman's life. 



Gunda thrust again and again with his sound tusk, with 

 the terrified and despairing keeper trying to cling to the broken 

 tusk and save himself. At last the point of the sound tusk 



