with his trunk, I'd belt him with the hand-axe till he pulled out,
shrieking fit to split my ear drums, he was that mad. He knew he had me
and didn't have me, and it near drove him wild. But he was no man's
fool. He knew he was safe as long as I stayed in the crevice, and he
made up his mind to keep me there. And he was dead right, only he hadn't
figured on the commissary. There was neither grub nor water around that
spot, so on the face of it he couldn't keep up the siege. He'd stand
before the opening for hours, keeping an eye on me and flapping
mosquitoes away with his big blanket ears. Then the thirst would come on
him and he'd ramp round and roar till the earth shook, calling me every
name he could lay tongue to. This was to frighten me, of course; and
when he thought I was sufficiently impressed, he'd back away softly and
try to make a sneak for the creek. Sometimes I'd let him get almost
there--only a couple of hundred yards away it was--when out I'd pop and
back he'd come, lumbering along like the old landslide he was. After I'd
done this a few times, and he'd figured it out, he changed his tactics.
Grasped the time element, you see. Without a word of warning, away he'd
go, tearing for the water like mad, scheming to get there and back before
I ran away. Finally, after cursing me most horribly, he raised the siege
and deliberately stalked off to the water-hole.

"That was the only time he penned me,--three days of it,--but after that
the hippodrome never stopped. Round, and round, and round, like a six
days' go-as-I-please, for he never pleased. My clothes went to rags and
tatters, but I never stopped to mend, till at last I ran naked as a son
of earth, with nothing but the old hand-axe in one hand and a cobble in
the other. In fact, I never stopped, save for peeps of sleep in the
crannies and ledges of the cliffs. As for the bull, he got perceptibly
thinner and thinner--must have lost several tons at least--and as nervous
as a schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony. When I'd come up with