rring her way with a club. He dared not
abide the shock, but slunk aside, and the next moment went down, struck
by several stones. Another huge fellow, avoiding my charger, stepped
suddenly, with a speech whose rudeness alone was intelligible, between
me and the boy who rode behind me. The boy told him to address the king;
the giant struck his little horse on the head with a hammer, and he
fell. Before the brute could strike again, however, one of the elephants
behind laid him prostrate, and trampled on him so that he did not
attempt to get up until hundreds of feet had walked over him, and the
army was gone by.

But at sight of the women what a dismay clouded the face of Lona! Hardly
one of them was even pleasant to look upon! Were her darlings to find
mothers among such as these?

Hardly had we halted in the central square, when two girls rode up in
anxious haste, with the tidings that two of the boys had been hurried
away by some women. We turned at once, and then first discovered that
the woman we befriended had disappeared with her baby.

But at the same moment we descried a white leopardess come bounding
toward us down a narrow lane that led from the square to the palace. The
Little Ones had not forgotten the fight of the two leopardesses in the
forest: some of them looked terrified, and their ranks began to waver;
but they remembered the order I had just given them, and stood fast.

We stopped to see the result; when suddenly a small boy, called Odu,
remarkable for his speed and courage, who had heard me speak of the
goodness of the white leopardess, leaped from the back of his bear,
which went shambling after him, and ran to meet her. The leopardess,
to avoid knocking him down, pulled herself up so suddenly that she went
rolling over and over: when she recovered her feet she found the child
on her back. Who could doubt the subjugation of a people which saw an
urchin of the enemy bestride an animal of which they lived in daily
terror? Confident of the effect on the whole army, we rode on.

As we stopped at the house to which our guides led us, we heard a
scream; I sprang down, and thundered at the door. My horse came and
pushed me away with his nose, turned about, and had begun to batter the
door with his heels, when up came little Odu on the leopardess, and at
sight of her he stood still, trembling. But she too had heard the cry,
and forgetting the child on her back, threw herself at the door; the
boy was d