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Early one morning the subinspector at a station at the other end of the town rang me. An elephant
was damaging the town. Would I please come and do something about it?
I did not know what I could do, but I got onto a horse and started out. I took my gun, maybe too
small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might scare him. Various local people stopped me on
the way and told me about the elephant's doings.
It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one. It had been chained up but last night it had
broken its chain and escaped. Its owner had set out to run after it, but had taken the wrong direction.
He was now twelve hours' journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly appeared in
the town. It had already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut (棚屋), killed a cow and turned over
fruitstalls.
I came round the hut and saw a man's dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, and he
could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant caught him with its trunk,
put its foot on his back and grounded him into the earth. This was the rainy season and he was lying on
his stomach in the soft mud, the__peacebreaker standing beside, looking innocent.
As I lifted my gun, I hesitated a few seconds. Then I fired. That was a shot that did for him.
You could see the pain of it knock the last strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a
moment to rise, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And
then down he came, with a crash that shook the ground.
1. Which of the following statements about the author is TRUE?
A. He was an Indian.
B. He knew elephants well.
C. He was not a local villager.
D. He was the owner of the elephant.
2. The elephant made so much trouble because ________.
A. its owner treated him cruelly
B. it got out of control
C. it hated the village people
D. it was a wild elephant
3. The underlined words "the peacebreaker" in Paragraph 4 refer to ________
A. the elephant
B. the dead man
C. the author
D. the subinspector
4. It can be inferred that the author felt ________ when he shot the elephant.
A. excited
B. sad
C. frightened
D. happy