t was within splash of them when
they burst; but when they fell upon the rude wooden booths and rush
shelters of the poorer folk, they set them ablaze instantly. There was
no putting out these fires.

These things also would have given to either Phorenice or myself little
enough of concern, as they are the trivial and common incidents of
every siege; but the mammoth on which we rode had not been so properly
schooled. When the first blue whiff of smoke came to us down the
windings of the street, the huge red beast hoisted its trunk, and began
to sway its head uneasily. When the smoke drifts grew more dense, and
here and there a tongue of flame showed pale beneath the sunshine, it
stopped abruptly and began to trumpet.

The guards who led it, tugged manfully at the chains which hung from the
jagged metal collar round its neck, so that the spikes ran deep into its
flesh, and reminded it keenly of its bondage. But the beast's terror
at the fire, which was native to its constitution, mastered all its
new-bought habits of obedience. From time unknown men have hunted the
mammoth in the savage ground, and the mammoth has hunted men; and the
men have always used fire as a shield, and mammoths have learned to
dread fire as the most dangerous of all enemies.

Phorenice's brow began to darken as the great beast grew more restive,
and she shook her red curls viciously. "Some one shall lose a head for
this blundering," said she. "I ordered to have this beast trained to
stand indifferent to drums, shouting, arrows, stones, and fire, and the
trainers assured me that all was done, and brought examples."

I slipped my girdle. "Here," I said, "quick. Let me lower you to the
ground."

She turned on me with a gleam. "Are you afraid for my neck, then,
Deucalion?"

"I have no mind to be bereaved before I have tasted my wedded life."

"Pish! There is little enough of danger. I will stay and ride it out. I
am not one of your nervous women, sir. But go you, if you please."

"There is little enough chance of that now."

Blood flowed from the mammoth's neck where the spikes of the collar tore
it, and with each drop, so did the tameness seem to ooze out from it
also. With wild squeals and trumpetings it turned and charged viciously
down the way it had come, scattering like straws the spearmen who
tried to stop it, and mowing a great swath through the crowd with its
monstrous progress. Many must have been trodden under foot, many killed
b