uelty, I almost pitied him. And so much for "the majesty of the human
countenance" which I have heard spoken of, but could never yet perceive.
It has been said that a bold man can subdue the rage even of the
ferocious tiger, merely by fixing his eye upon him. Very likely, for the
tiger is as cowardly as he is cruel; but did anybody ever hear of an
_elephant_, old or young, being frightened at a couple of little
twinkling eyes? Oh! most absurd!

After a little while the monkey--I mean the man in the river--joined
his companions on the bank, and when they had consulted together, they
seemed to give it up as a bad job. So they rode back down the river,
and we proceeded quietly on our journey.

It was more than fifty years after this adventure before I again
encountered any of these savage disturbers of the peace of the
wilderness, though we often heard of them from herds who had lost some
of their number by the treacherous devices of the enemy. During this
long period of tranquillity, so little occurred worth noticing, that I
shall leave the relation of this part of my life till another
opportunity, and hasten to give you an account of my next interview
with man, on which occasion it was that I began those observations on
his manner of making pit-falls, and other contrivances for our
destruction, which have been of such service in enabling us to avoid
these dangers. At this time, instead of losing one of our companions,
we had the pleasure of rescuing a member of another community from a
lingering and dreadful death.

We were quite on the other side of the island, several hundred miles
from the scene of the last tragedy. For some days we had been aware of
the neighbourhood of man from the smell of his watch-fires, and
accordingly we had doubled the number of our sentinels, and had taken
care not to wander far from each other. But we neither saw nor heard
anything of the enemy until about noon of a burning hot day, when, as
we were sheltering ourselves from the sun in a thick wood, we were
suddenly startled by loud shouts and yells, so discordant and hideous,
that we were sure they could be produced by no other animal but man. To
these cries we paid little attention, but presently was heard in the
same direction another sound--a sound which caused our very hearts to
burn within us, as we recognised the peculiar cry which a female of our
own species utters when in terrible distress and danger. A hasty
council was immediat