A snaky black trunk went round his body and he was tossed up into the air. The elephant waited to stamp him underfoot as soon as he fell to the ground. But he did not fall. The astonished elephant looked up. The little black man had caught hold of a branch and swung himself up on top of it. There he sat, laughing at the beast that tried in vain to reach him with its long trunk. An elephant doesn’t like being laughed at. It is almost the only one in the entire animal kingdom intelligent enough to know when it is being laughed at. The beast below the tree trumpeted angrily, and crashed his iron-hard forehead against the tree which, being a young one and not firmly rooted, promptly tumbled to the ground. The elephant poked among the branches in search of his victim. But the pygmy had scrambled out of reach. Another of the little hunters was not so fortunate. An elephant swung his trunk like a gigantic golf-club and knocked the little fellow spinning through the air above the backs of other elephants to fall at last between two of the huge beasts, where he was squeezed so badly that he lost consciousness.
