ven with guns, how had they dared to confront a
moving mountain? Mike tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. The
stock slipped through his clammy hands.

"Shoot!" implored the boy beside him. "You shoot, now!"

Mike gazed down. The elephant was aware of him. It turned
deliberately, staring up the bank as it swayed on the four black
pillars of its legs. Mike could see its eyes, set in a mass of grayish
wrinkles. The eyes had recognized him.

They knew, he realized. The eyes knew all about him; who he was and
what he was and what he had come here to do. The eyes had seen man
before--perhaps long before Mike was born. They understood everything;
the gun and the presence and the purpose.

"Shoot!" the boy cried, not bothering to hold his voice down any
longer. For the elephant was moving slowly towards the side of the
wallow, moving deliberately to firmer footing, and the boy was afraid.
Mike was afraid, too, but he couldn't shoot.

"No," he murmured. "Let him go. I can't kill him."

"You must," the boy said. "You promise. Look--all the meat. Meat for
two, three villages."

Mike shook his head. "I can't do it," he said. "That isn't meat.
That's life. Bigger life than we are. Don't you understand? Oh, the
bloody hell with it! Come on."

The boy wasn't listening to him. He was watching the elephant. And now
he started to tremble.

For the elephant was moving up onto solid ground. It moved slowly,
daintily, almost mincing as its legs sampled the surface of the shore.
Then it looked up and this time there was no doubt as to the direction
of its gaze--it stared intently at Mike and the boy on the bank. Its
ears fanned, then flared. Suddenly the elephant raised its trunk and
trumpeted fiercely.

And then, lowering the black battering-ram of its head, the beast came
forward. A deceptively slow lope, a scarcely accelerated trot, and
then all at once it was moving swiftly, swiftly and surely and
inexorably towards them. The angle of the bank was not steep and the
elephant's speed never slackened on the slope. Its right shoulder
struck a sapling and the sapling splintered. It was crashing forward
in full charge. Again it trumpeted, trunk extended like a flail of
doom.

"Shoot!" screamed the boy.

Mike didn't want to shoot. He wanted to run. He wanted to flee the
mountain, flee the incredible breathing bulk of this grotesque giant.
But he was a white hunter, he was a man, and a man is not a beast; a
man does not ru