ants, quickening their pace, rushed on in
an irresistible mass some of the men, crazed with fright, ran to meet
them. Others flung themselves to the ground where they were.

But over both the great monsters passed, treading them to pulp under the
ponderous feet. The animals of the mounted men, as terrified as their
riders, swung about and sprang headlong into the river. Many of the men
on foot did the same. The heads of animals and men appeared and
disappeared, bobbing up and down, then their bodies were rolled over and
over, tossed up on the waves and sucked under. One by one they
disappeared.

A few of the panic-stricken mob had tried to climb the precipitous
cliffs in vain. One, however, getting his hands into a narrow, slanting
crack, dragged himself up a few feet.

It was the _Amban_. Frank drew his pistol; but Muriel clung to his arm
and cried:

"Oh, spare the poor wretch!"

Tashi had no scruples, but his magazine was empty and he searched in
vain for a cartridge.

But Yuan Shi Hung's time had come. Badshah's trunk shot out and caught
the climber's ankle. The Chinaman was plucked from the face of the cliff
and hurled to the ground. A frenzied shriek burst from him as the tusk
was driven into his shuddering body, which in an instant was trodden to
a bloody pulp. Muriel hid her face against her lover, but the agony of
the wretch's dying yell rang in her ears.

Not one of their enemies was left alive. Then the elephants one by one
slid and slithered down into the rushing water which was very little
below the brink. The mothers supported the youngest calves with their
trunks, the less immature climbing on to their backs. Tashi checked
Badshah as he was about to follow the herd into the river and, lame as
he was, slid down to the ground. He searched the crushed and mangled
corpses of his fellow-countrymen and collected their girdles until he
had enough to knot and plait into two ropes, one to go about Badshah's
neck, the other around the great body. More girdles sufficed to join
these together and supply cords by which the men and the woman on his
back could tie themselves on to the ropes and to each other securely.
When this was done Badshah slid into the river. As elephants do he sank
in the water until only the upper part of his head and the tip of his
upraised trunk were above it. Without the precaution that Tashi had
taken his riders would have been instantly swept away.

Only elephants could have battle