ing up, another would stop
instantly from shaking the dust out of the roots which he was preparing
to eat, others left off chewing their food. When a few seconds of the
most perfect calm had elapsed, the rooting up and dusting out went on
more briskly than ever, and the mouthful was doubly sweet to those who
were now allowed to finish the noisy process of mastication.

At last our patience was rewarded, and Jung gave the signal for us to
advance.

On each elephant there were now two riders, the mahout and a man behind,
who, armed with a piece of hard wood into which two or three spikes were
inserted, hammered the animal about the root of the tail as with a
mallet. He was furnished with a looped rope to hold on by, and a sack
stuffed with straw to sit upon, and was expected to belabour the elephant
with one hand while he kept himself on its back with the other.

This was the position I filled on this trying occasion; but my elephant
fared well as regarded the instrument of torture, for I was much too
fully occupied in taking care of myself to think of using it. Away we
went at full speed, jostling one another up banks and through streams,
and I frequently was all but jolted off the diminutive sack which ought
to have formed my seat, but did not, for I found it impossible to sit.
Being quite unable to maintain any position for two moments together, I
looked upon it as a miracle that every bone in my body was not broken.
Sometimes I was suddenly jerked into a sitting posture, and, not being
able to get my heels from under me in time, they received a violent blow.
A moment after I was thrown forward on my face, only righting myself in
time to see a huge impending branch, which I had to escape by slipping
rapidly down the crupper, taking all the skin off my toes in so doing,
and, what would have been more serious, the branch nearly taking my head
off if I did not stoop low enough. When I could look about me, the scene
was most extraordinary and indescribable: a hundred elephants were
tearing through the jungle as rapidly as their unwieldy forms would let
them, crushing down the heavy jungle in their headlong career, while
their riders were gesticulating violently, each man punishing his
elephant, or making a bolster of himself as he flung his body on one side
or the other to avoid branches; while some, Ducrow-like, and confident in
their activity, were standing on the bare backs of their elephants,
holding only by the