Rataplan | Page 5

other koomkies of her prowess and successful capture.
In vain Rataplan butted the tree nearest to him with all his huge strength; it never moved, scarcely even shook, and he rolled again on the ground in despair. He wound his trunk round and round one of the ropes, doing his best to break and split it, but the rope was good and strong and only squeaked dismally.
He shrieked and roared, writhed and turned, until the forest re-echoed with his cries, and the cruel ropes cut into his ankles, making deep, red wounds which stained the ground all round his feet.
After a time his shrill cries of rage developed into hoarse moans of humiliation and despair.
All that night and the next Rataplan was left there. The ropes cut deeper and deeper into his poor, swollen ankles, his body getting fainter and fainter for want of food. But he was not a Rogue elephant for nothing, and would not give in.
In vain a whole lot of koomkies were brought out to try and induce him to follow them into the _keddah_; he was not to be tempted, and tore and strained at his ropes to such a degree that the mahout feared he would make wounds that could never be healed; so he took away the koomkies and waited yet another night.
The third night the koomkies were brought out again, this time with Kinka at their head. But the sight of Kinka nearly drove Rataplan mad; he strained and tore at the ropes, trumpeting and roaring, until even the koomkies were frightened. Could he only have got at Kinka, he would have torn her limb from limb. But although he stretched to his utmost, and his hind legs went out behind him in the struggle, he could not get near her.
The mahout was getting troubled, for Rataplan's ankles were now in such a state as to make him almost valueless, and he knew, even did the elephant give in now, it would be months before they were healed, if indeed they ever healed at all.
Yet another long, weary day and night did poor Rataplan lay there, getting weaker and weaker and suffering untold agonies caused by those cruel ropes.
He had by this time torn his ankles so fearfully that they were all ulcerated, and stiff from lying on the ground. To add to his misery, he had caught violent inflammation in his eyes.
The mahout realized that unless he got him into the keddah soon he would be of no use at all, and once more did his best with koomkies and dainty bits of food to tempt him to follow into the keddah.
But still Rataplan would not give in: his body was weak and getting visibly thinner, but his spirit was as strong, as wild and as unbreakable as ever.
There was a consultation among the _mahouts_, and it was decided, as he was still so savage, there was nothing to be done but to leave him yet one more day.
But the next day Rataplan presented a piteous sight. His poor ankles were swollen enormously; his eyes were so inflamed that he was quite blind, and, to make matters worse, the mahouts saw that he was suffering now from the Ceylon Murrain.
There was nothing to be done then but kill him.
It had been a wet night which had made his poor, ulcerated ankles as bad as they could be, and the pain in his eyes was maddening. Suffering from the murrain, too, it was far too dangerous to take him among other elephants, and so the end of Rataplan, the Rogue, was that, in spite of his grand physique, his unbreakable spirit, and his indomitable patience, he was actually shot by the very things he had despised all his life--those silly little things that carried guns.
And Kinka, when she knew that he was dead, was not even sorry. She only gave a triumphant little trumpeting as she thought of the triumph of her capture.
And so no one grieved for Rataplan, no one cared or thought about him. But then we must not forget that he was and always had been Rataplan, the Rogue.

GEAN, THE GIRAFFE
A tall, stately, gentle creature, standing about eighteen feet high.
A pretty, graceful head; large, tender, dark eyes; a beautiful, tawny coat, covered with rich, dark spots; a long neck; a rather short body, measuring about seven feet in length; slender, shapely legs, terminating in feet with divided hoofs; and a long tail, ending in a wisp of dark-colored hair, which was a splendid thing with which to whisk off the flies.
This was Gean, the Giraffe, and she belonged to a tribe which boasted of the fact that they were the tallest of all animals. But they were not aggressive about it at all, for giraffes are the most modest and