“Come back!” yelled Adrian. “Rosy, come back!”

But Rosy continued to plough onwards towards the harbour entrance. There was nothing for it, thought Adrian bitterly, he would have to go to her rescue alter all. So, taking a deep breath, he jumped over the side of the Sploshport Queen. The oily water was unpleasantly cold. He rose spluttering to the surface and struck out in hot pursuit of Rosy. Eventually, by putting on a turn of speed that made him feel his lungs were bursting, he swam alongside.

“You fool,” he gasped at her. “You’re swimming the wrong way.”

Rosy was delighted to see him. She uttered a small gurgling squeak of recognition and wrapped her trunk affectionately around Adrian’s neck, thus successfully plunging him beneath the water. He uncurled her trunk and rose gasping and spluttering.

“You bloody elephant,” he gasped. He seized the edge of her ear and, feeling not unlike a very small tug in charge of a gigantic ocean liner, succeeded in turning her so that she aimed in the general direction of shore.

Some two or three minutes later they made landfall at a series of shallow steps that led up from the water to the dockside, and up these, with a certain amount of effort, they made their way. The docks had been comparatively deserted when they had arrived, but now a large crowd had assembled in the miraculous way that crowds do assemble when any accident happens. Included in the crowd was a very large and belligerent-looking policeman. As Adrian, still clinging to Rosy’s ear, staggered up to the dockside and started to wring the water out of his hair, the policeman approached him, his hands behind his back, his buttons glinting in the lamplight.

“Good evening, sir;” he said.

“Good evening,” said Adrian, wondering what was good about it.

“Would that be your elephant, sir?” said the constable, “or were you rescuing it, like, on behalf of somebody else?”

“No,” said Adrian, “it’s mine.”

“Ah,” said the constable.

He extracted a notebook from his pocket and turned the leaves slowly, licking his forefinger copiously as he turned each page.

“You wouldn’t, I suppose, by any chance, sir, be Mr. Adrian Rookwhistle, would you?” he enquired.

“That is my name,” said Adrian resignedly.

“Ah,” said the constable beaming at him paternally, “then perhaps you could spare the time, sir, just to step down to the station with me. One or two little matters that need to be sorted out. I understand that elephant of yours has been having quite an exciting career.”

“Look, officer,” said Adrian, “I can explain everything.”

“Don’t say a word,” barked a trenchant voice suddenly from the depths of the crowd.

Adrian looked round startled and saw that the advice had been offered to him by a short, circular little man like a dumpling. He was wearing a faded, dusty looking cut-away coat, a top hat that looked as though it bad been run over by a very heavy horse and cart, baggy trousers and an enormous pair of elastic-sided boots so ancient that the toes pointed skywards. Under his coat, spreading over his paunch, was a moleskin waistcoat. He had a great beak of a nose, as scarlet and as pitted as a strawberry, and fierce blue eyes under shaggy white snowdrifts of eyebrow. He was so short that he came within a hair’s breadth of being a dwarf and his corpulence made him appear shorter still, but he strutted up to the constable in such a belligerent manner that the minion of the law immediately took a step backwards and touched his helmet.

“Not one word,” said this little man, turning to Adrian and holding up an admonishing forefinger. So imposing was the little man’s demeanour that the crowd, which had been shuffling and laughing among itself, fell silent. The little man rearranged his top hat and sniffed prodigiously. He was obviously conscious of the fact that he had made this impact and was extracting every last exquisite moment from it.

Having rearranged his battered headgear to his satisfaction, he then inserted his fingers carefully into an ample pocket in his moleskin waistcoat and extracted from it a large and battered pewter snuff box. Rosy, under the impression that it was something edible, stretched out her trunk tentatively and sniffed.

“Desist,” said the little man coldly, fixing her with a malevolent stare, and to Adrian’s astonishment, Rosy curled up her trunk and looked as embarrassed as only an elephant can. It was obvious that she had fallen under the little man’s spell as well as the crowd. The little man opened the snuff box, whereupon it played a few tinkling bars of “God Save the Queen.” He extracted a pinch of snuff delicately and then, holding out his left hand, placed the snuff reverently on the inside of his wrist, He closed the snuff box with his right band and returned it to his pocket, then raised his wrist to his nose and sniffed deeply. The silence was complete. Everybody, including the constable, was watching him with rapt attention. He sniffed a couple of times and then, starting at the tips of his shoes and reverberating all the way up through his whole body, he sneezed enormously and voluptuously, uttering at the same time a sort of screeching yelp that made everybody, including Rosy, retreat several paces. He then produced an enormous silk handkerchief and blew his nose into it with a trumpeting worthy of a bull elephant. He stuffed the handkerchief back So his pocket and straightened his top hat which had become disarranged by the force of his sneeze.

“Inspector,” he said, raising his shaggy eyebrows and looking up at the constable, “you have just been privileged to witness a sight which many people would give ten years of their lives to have seen.”

“Yes, sir,” said the constable. “I am constable, actually, sir.”

“It matters not,” observed the little man, “how menial you are, it is a matter of appreciating great acts of heroism when you see them.”

“Yes, sir,” said the constable woodenly.

“It is the Bible,” said the little man, waving his arms oratorically, “that teaches us we have dominion over the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field.”

“If you say so, sir,” said the constable.

“I do say so,” said the little man. “And that includes elephants.” He threw his left arm round Adrian’s dripping shoulders and spread out his right hand with a gesture of one about to field a tennis ball.

“Friends,” he said trenchantly, “this brave young man, prompted by the sacred words of the Bible, unhesitatingly and without a thought for his own safety, cast himself into the roaring tumult of the waves to save a beast of the field.”

The fact that the harbour was oily calm in no way detracted from this dramatic statement.

“Is there a man among you,” continued the little man, addressing the crowd which consisted largely of women, “is there a man among you who would have performed such a deed of valour?”

“Excuse me, sir,” said the constable, “I know that what this young man did was very brave, but you see, him and his elephant is wanted.”

The little man swirled like a pouter pigeon and his eyes became as blue and as sharp as two periwinkles under ice.

“I,” he said, adjusting his top hat with care, “I am Sir Magnus Ramping Fumitory. You may, no doubt, during your long association with the courts, have come across my name.”

“Yes, sir,” said the constable dismally, touching his helmet once more, “I have heard about you.”

“Well, I demand to know,” said Sir Magnus, “whether you intend to arrest this young man, this hero of the deeps?”

“Well, yes, sir,” said the constable, “in a sort of way. I just want him and his elephant to come down to the station and help us with a bit of information. It’s pursuant to a complaint.”

Sir Magnus smiled a grim smile.

“What a masterly massacre of the tongue that Shakespeare spoke,” he said. “Still, Chief Constable, I realise you have your duty to do, however erroneous it may be, so I will allow you to apprehend this heroic young man and I will, indeed, endeavour to protect you from the wrath of the crowd. For it is patently obvious to me where their sympathies lie.”