uth.

Now was the critical moment. Everything lay with the decision of the bulls
leading the van, who, with trunks flung up and crooked forward, were
holding the scent as a man holds a line. They had only a moment of time,
but he who knows the elephant folk knows well the rapidity with which
their minds can reason, and from their action it would seem that the
arbiters of Berselius's fate reasoned thus: "The enemy were behind; they
are now in front. So be it. Let us charge."

And they charged, with a blast of trumpeting that shook the sky; with
trunks flung up and forward-driving tusks, ears spread like great sails,
and a sound like the thunder of artillery, they charged the scent, the
body of the herd following the leaders, as the body of a battering-ram
follows the head.

* * * * *

Adams, when he had flung himself down in his tent, fell asleep instantly.
This sleep, which was profound and dreamless, lasted but half an hour, and
was succeeded by a slumber in which, as in a darkened room where a
magic-lantern is being operated, vivid and fantastic pictures arose before
him. He was on the march with the column through a country infinite as is
space; the road they were taking, like the road to the tombs of the
Chinese kings, was lined on either side with animals done in stone. At
first these were tigers, and then, as though some veil of illusion had
been withdrawn, he discovered them to be creatures far larger and more
cruel, remorseless, and fearful than tigers; they were elephants--great
stone elephants that had been standing there under the sun from
everlasting, and they dwindled in perspective from giants to pigmies and
from pigmies to grains of sand, for they were the guardians of a road
whose end was infinity.

Then these vanished, but the elephant country under the burning sun
remained. There was nothing to be seen but the sun-washed spaces of
wind-blown grass, and broken ground, and scattered trees, till across the
sky in long procession, one following the other, passed shadow elephants.
Shadows each thrice the height of the highest mountain, and these things
called forth in the mind of the sleeper such a horror and depth of dread
that he started awake with the sweat running down his face.

Sleep was shattered, and in the excitement and nerve-tension of
over-tiredness he lay tossing on his back. The long march of the day
before, in which men had matched themselves a