He had stayed the tree by fastening the rheim to its upper branches on the _opposite_ side, and then carrying the rope to the limbs of another tree that stood out in that direction.
Thus adjusted, the elephant's tree was only kept from falling by the rheim-stay; and a slight push, in the direction of the latter, would have thrown over.
Swartboy now replaced the section of bark, which he had preserved; and after carefully collecting the chips, no one, without close examination, could have told that the tree had ever felt the edge of an axe.
Another operation yet remained to be performed--that was the planting of the stakes, already prepared by Von Bloom and Hendrik.

To set these firmly deep holes had to be made.

But Swartboy was just the man to make a hole; and in less than ten minutes he had sunk three, each over a foot deep, and not a half-inch wider than the thickness of the stakes! You may be curious to know how he accomplished this.

You would have dug a hole with a spade, and necessarily as wide as the spade itself.

But Swartboy had no spade, and would not have used it if there had been one--since it would have made the holes too large for his purpose.
Swartboy sunk his holes by "crowing"-- which process he performed by means of a small pointed stick.