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.