Summary

Portrait of Jules Verne Jules Verne,  Five Weeks in a Balloon — Chapter Seventeenth… (1873)

“ He flung his trunk from side to side, and his monstrous bounds gave the car several rather heavy thumps. Meanwhile the doctor stood ready, hatchet in hand, to cut the rope, should need arise.
"But," said he, "we shall not give up our anchor until the last moment."
This drive, with an elephant for the team, lasted about an hour and a half; yet the animal did not seem in the least fatigued. These immense creatures can go over a great deal of ground, and, from one day to another, are found at enormous distances from there they were last seen, like the whales, whose mass and speed they rival.
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Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Jules Verne Jules Verne,  Five Weeks in a Balloon — Chapter Seventeenth… (1873)

“ The elephant uttered a long bellow of terror and agony, then raised himself up for a moment, twirling his trunk in the air, and finally fell with all his weight upon one of his tusks, which he broke off short. He was dead.
"His tusk's broken!" exclaimed Kennedy--"ivory too that in England would bring thirty-five guineas per hundred pounds."
"As much as that?" said Joe, scrambling down to the ground by the anchor-rope.
"What's the use of sighing over it, Dick?" said the doctor. "Are we ivory merchants? Did we come hither to make money?"
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Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Jules Verne Jules Verne,  Five Weeks in a Balloon — Chapter Seventeenth… (1873)

“ Joe examined the anchor and found it solidly attached to the unbroken tusk. The doctor and Dick leaped out on the ground, while the balloon, now half emptied, hovered over the body of the huge animal.
"What a splendid beast!" said Kennedy, "what a mass of flesh! I never saw an elephant of that size in India!"
"There's nothing surprising about that, my dear Dick; the elephants of Central Africa are the finest in the world.
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Source: Wikisource

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