Early one morning the sub-inspector 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  , killed a cow and turned over fruit!stalls. 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, _ standing beside, looking innocent. As I lifted my gun, I hesitated a few seconds. Then I fired. That was a shot for him. You could see the pain of it knocking 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. It can be inferred that the author felt   _   when he shot the elephant.
excited sad frightened happy