to the tree tops and pulled down the tender foliage.
His trunk stretched high above his head as he felt for the tender
shoots.

"A regular boarding house reach!" laughed Dan, forgetting his suspense
for a moment. "Say that bozo would never have to say, 'Please pass the
butter.' He could grab it from the other end of the table."

One of the Taharans gave a cry of astonishment at seeing the huge
creature so near by, and at the noise the elephant faced about, waving
his enormous ears and looking at the intruders with an expression of
anger in his little, intelligent eyes.

"I feel safer out here!" Dan observed. "What use would a bow and arrow
be against that tough hide?"

"You're right. Even my old fashioned Arab gun would hardly send a
bullet through it."

"How do you suppose the Stone-Age men ever hunted mastodons?" asked
Dan. "Those woolly mastodons with long curving tusks were lots bigger
than the elephant."

"I guess it was the mastodon that did the hunting in those days," Dick
answered. "The cave-men were not the hunters but the hunted, if you
ask me."

"And that goes for the sabre-toothed tiger, too."

"I bet it was a toss-up whether the human race would conquer the
animals or be eaten by them in the Stone-Age," said Dick. "Maybe
that's why the people of today get scared and have panics so easily.
It may be a hang-over from the fear that haunted our ancestors."

"I can't say I'm exactly scared----" Dan Carter began, but before he
could finish his sentence a shout from a boatman startled him and he
answered with a yell of terror.

The canoe was passing close to a shallow spot and suddenly a pair of
jaws snapped open right alongside. They were so wide that it looked as
though they could crash through the canoe with one bite, and the
vicious rows of teeth could easily slice through a man's body.

Dan thought he was facing a horrible death in that instant and in fact
he had never had a narrower escape. As he yelled, he threw himself
flat, but the black guide, Mutaba showed no sign of fear.

Mutaba had hunted crocodiles before and knew what to do. His black arm
shot out like lightning with a heavy stick in his fist. It was
sharpened at both ends and as Mutaba thrust it upright between the
monster's rows of teeth and the jaws snapped to close, the upper and
lower jaw were stuck on the points of the stake.

Mutaba grinned as he jerked away his hand and the canoe darted past,
just in the nick of