sank from sight in twenty feet of water, almost as though it had been a stone.
The commission said it might have been a broken coupling, or an imperfect rail, or a broken axle, but no one ever really knew. The only thing that was certain was that the car carrying Ali and Joie was lying in the mud at the bottom of the river in twenty feet of water.
As it was a very hot night, and Ali had been sleeping lightly when the car which carried himself, along with Joie and two other elephants, toppled upon the bridge and hurtled into the river, he was awake almost before it struck the water. When the car finally settled at a slant of perhaps thirty degrees, and the water came pouring in up to Ali's knees, he knew what had happened.
But he was a child of the jungle, inured
