FAR INTO ELEPHANT LAND
They sighted a small herd of giraffe two days later, but so far off as to
be beyond pursuit; but before evening, just as they were about to camp by
some pools, they came across rhino.
Berselius's quick eye spotted the beasts, a bull and a cow. They were in
the open, under shelter of some thick grass; the bull was half sitting up,
and his head and horn in the evening light might have been taken for the
stump of a broken tree. The cow was not visible at first, but almost
immediately after they sighted the bull, she heaved herself up and stood a
silhouette against the sky.
The wind was blowing from the beasts, so it was quite possible to get
close up to them. The meat would be useful, so Berselius and his companion
started, with Félix carrying the guns.
As they drew close Adams noticed that the back of the great cow seemed
alive and in motion. Half a dozen rhinoceros birds, in fact, were upon it,
and almost immediately, sighting the hunters, they rose chattering and
fluttering in the air.
These birds are the guardians of the half-blind rhinoceros. They live on
the parasites that infest his skin. It is a partnership. The birds warn
the rhinoceros of danger, and he, vicariously, feeds the birds. Scarcely
had the birds given warning than the bull heaved himself up. Berselius's
rifle rang out, but the light was uncertain, and the brute wounded, but
not mortally, charged forward took a half circle, swung his head from side
to side in search of his assailant, and sighted the cow. Instantly, horn
down and squealing, he charged her. She met him horn to horn, and the
smash could be heard at the camp where the porters and the soldiers stood
gazing open-mouthed at the battle between the two great brutes charging
each other in the low evening light, fighting with the ferocity of tigers
and the agility of cats.
Adams, close up as he was, had a better view, and unless he had seen with
his own eyes, he could not have believed that two animals so heavy and
unwieldy could display such nimbleness and such quickness of ferocity.
It was the wickedest sight, and it was brought to an end at last by the
rifle of Berselius.
Curiously enough, neither brute had injured the other very much. The horns
which, had they been of ivory, must have been shivered, were intact, for
the horn of a rhinoceros is flexible; it is built up of a conglomeration
of hairs, and though, perhaps, the most unbreakable thing in the universe,
it bends up to a certain point just as a rapier does.
Next morning, two hours after daybreak, Félix, who was scouting just ahead
of the column, came running back with news he had struck elephant spoor.
Every tooth in his head told the tale. Not only spoor, but the spoor of a
vast herd cutting right across the line of march.
Berselius came forward to examine, and Adams came with him.
The dry ground and wire grass was not the best medium for taking the track
of the beasts, but to the experienced eyes of Berselius and the Zappo Zap
everything was clear. A herd of elephant had passed not long ago, and they
were undisturbed and unsuspicious. When elephants are suspicious they
march in lines, single file, one stepping in the tracks of another. This
herd was spread wide and going easy of mind, but at what pace it would be
impossible to say.
The long boat-shaped back feet of the bulls leave a print unmistakable in
the rainy season when the ground is soft, but still discernible to the
trained eye in the dry season. Félix declared that there were at least
twenty bulls in the herd, and some of huge size.
"How long is it since they passed here?" asked Berselius.
Félix held up the fingers of one hand. From certain indications he came to
the conclusion they had passed late in the night, three hours or so before
daybreak. They numbered forty or fifty, leaving aside the calves that
might be with them. He delivered these opinions, speaking in the native,
and Berselius instantly gave the order, "Left wheel!" to the crowd of
porters; and at the word the long column turned at right angles to the
line of march and struck due west, treading the track of the herd.
Nothing is more exciting than this following in the track of a mammoth
army whose tactics you cannot foresee. This herd might be simply moving a
few miles in search of a new feeding ground, or it might be making one of
those great sweeping marches covering hundreds of miles that the
mysterious elephant people make at the dictates of their mysterious
instinct. It might be moving at a gentle pace, or swifter than a man could
run. A mile on the new route they came on a broken tree, a great tree
broken down as if by a storm; the fractures were quite recent. The
elephant folk had done this. They came across another tree whose sides,
facing north and south, had been clearly barked, and the pieces of the
bark, farther on, that had been chewed and flung away.
With one stroke of a tusk passing a tree, and without stopping, an
elephant will tear off a strip of bark; and it was curious to see how the
bark of this tree to east and west was intact. The moving herd had not
stopped. Just in passing, an elephant on either side of the tree had taken
his slice of bark, chewed it and flung it away. There were also small
trees trodden down mercilessly under foot. Thus the great track of the
herd lay before the hunters, but not a sign in all the sunlit, silent
country before them of the herd itself.
It was Berselius's aim to crowd up his men as quickly as a forced march
could do it, camp and then pursue the herd with a few swift followers, the
barest possible amount of stores and one tent.
The calabashes and the water bottles had been filled at the last halt, but
it was desirable to find water for the evening's camping place.
It was now that Berselius showed his capacity as a driver and his own
enormous store of energy.
He took the tail of the column, and woe to the porters who lagged behind!
Félix was with him, and Adams, who was heading the column, could hear the
shouts of the Zappo Zap. The men with their loads went at a quick walk,
sometimes breaking into a trot, urged forward by the gun-butt of Félix.
The heat was sweltering, but there was no rest. On, on, on, ever on
through a country that changed not at all; the same breaks and ridges, the
same limitless plains of waving grass, the same scant trees, the same
heat-shaken horizon toward which the elephant road led straight,
unwavering, endless.
The brain reeled with the heat and the dazzle, but the column halted not
nor stayed. The energy of Berselius drove it forward as the energy of
steam drives an engine. His voice, his very presence, put life into
flagging legs and sight into dazzled eyes. He spared neither himself nor
others; the game was ahead, the spoor was hot, and the panther in his soul
drove him forward.
Toward noon they halted for two hours where some bushes spread their
shade. The porters lay down on their bellies, with arms outspread, having
taken a draught of water and a bite of food; they lay in absolute and
profound slumber. Adams, nearly as exhausted, lay on his back. Even Félix
showed signs of the journey, but Berselius sat right back into the bushes,
with his knees drawn up and, with eyes fixed on the eastern distance,
brooded.
He was always like this on a great hunt, when the game was near. Silent
and brooding, and morose to the point of savagery.
One might almost have fancied that in far distant days this man had been a
tiger, and that the tiger still lived slumbering in his soul, triumphant
over death, driving him forth at intervals from civilization to wander in
the wild places of the earth and slay.
Two hours past noon they resumed their journey: on, on, on, treading the
elephant track which still went due east straight as an arrow to the blue
horizon. The frightful tiredness they had felt before the noonday halt had
passed, giving place to a dull, dreamy feeling, such as comes after taking
opium. The column marched mechanically and without thought, knowing only
two things, the feel of the hard ground and grass beneath their feet, and
the smiting of the sun on their backs.
Thus the galley slaves of old laboured at their oars and the builders of
the pyramids beneath their loads, all moving like one man. But here was no
tune of flutes to set the pace, or monotonous song to help the lifting;
only the voice of Berselius like a whip-lash, and the gun-butt of Félix
drumming on the ribs of laggards.
A light, hot wind was blowing in their faces. Adams, still at the head of
the column, had suffered severely during the morning march, and the
re-start after the noon rest was painful to him as a beating; but the
reserve forces of a powerful constitution that had never been tampered
with were now coming into play, and, after a time, he felt little
discomfort. His body, like a wound-up mechanism, did all the work; his
mind became divorced from it; he experienced a curious exaltation, like
that which comes from drink, only finer far and more ethereal. The column
seemed marching far swifter than it was marching in reality, the vast
sunlit land seemed vaster even than it was; the wind-blown grass, the far
distant trees, the circling skyline, all spoke of freedom unknown to man:
the freedom of the herd they were pursuing; the freedom of the bird flying
overhead; the freedom of the wind blowing in the grass; the freedom of the
limitless, endless, sunlit country. Meridians of silence, and light, and
plains, and trees, and mountains, and forests. Parallels of virgin land.
He was feeling what the bird knows and feels when it beats up the
mountains or glides down the vales of air; what the elephant herd knows
and feels when it moves over mountains and across plains; what the
antelopes know when distance calls them.
A shout from Félix, and the Zappo Zap came running up the line; his head
was flung up and he was sniffing the air. Then, walking beside Adams, he
stared ahead right away over the country before them to the far skyline.
"Elephant smell," he replied, when Adams asked him what was the matter;
then, turning, he shouted some words in the native back to Berselius, and
tramped on beside Adams, his nose raised to the wind, of which each puff
brought the scent stronger.
Adams could smell nothing, but the savage could tell that right ahead
there were elephants; close up, too, yet not a sign of them could be
seen.
This puzzled him, and what puzzles a savage frightens him.
His nose told him that here were elephants in sight of his eyes; his eyes
told him that there were none.
All at once the column came to a dead halt. Porters flung down their loads
and cried out in fright. Even Berselius stood stock-still in
astonishment.
From the air, blown on the wind from no visible source, came the shrill
trumpeting of an elephant.
There, in broad daylight, close up to them, the sound came with the shock
of the supernatural. Nothing stirred in all the land but the grass bending
to the wind. There was not even a bird in the air; yet close to them an
elephant was trumpeting shrilly and fiercely as elephants trumpet when
they charge.
Again came the sound, and once again, but this time it broke lamentably to
a complaint that died away to silence.
Instantly the Zappo Zap came to himself. He knew that sound. An elephant
was dying somewhere near by, caught in a trap possibly. He rushed down the
line, gun-butting the porters back to their places, shouting to Berselius,
helping loads up on the heads of the men who had dropped them, so that in
a minute the column was in motion again and going swiftly to make up for
lost time.
Five minutes brought them to a slight rise in the ground, beyond which,
deep-cut, rock-strewn and skeleton-dry, lay the bed of a river.
In the rains this would be scarcely fordable, but now not even a trickle
of water could be seen. On the floor of this river-bed, like a huge dark
rock, lay the body of an elephant.
An African elephant is the biggest creature on earth, far bigger than his
Indian cousin, and far more formidable looking. Adams could scarcely
believe that the thing before him was the body of an animal, as he
contrasted its size with Félix, who had raced down the slope and was
examining the carcass.
"Dead!" cried Félix, and the porters, taking heart, descended, but not
without groaning and lamentations, for it is well-known to the natives
that whoever comes across an elephant lying down must die, speedily and by
violent means; and this elephant was lying down in very truth, his tusks
humbly lowered to the ground, his great ears motionless, just as death had
left him.
It was a bull and surely, from his size, the father of the herd. Berselius
considered the beast to be of great age. One tusk was decayed badly and
the other was chipped and broken, and on the skin of the side were several
of those circular sores one almost always finds on the body of a
rhinoceros, "dundos," as the natives call them; old scars and wounds told
their tale of old battles and the wanderings of many years.
It might have been eighty or a hundred years since the creature had first
seen the light and started on its wonderful journey over mountains and
plains through jungle and forest, lying down maybe only twenty times in
all those years, wandering hither and thither, and knowing not that every
step of its journey was a step closer to here.
Just this little piece of ground on which it lay had been plotted out for
it a hundred years ago, and it had come to it by a million mazy paths, but
not less surely than had it followed the leading of a faultlessly directed
arrow.
The herd had left it here to die. Berselius, examining the body closely,
could find no wound. He concluded that it had come to its end just as old
men come to their end at last--the mechanism had failed, hindered,
perhaps, by some internal disease, and it had lain down to wait for
death.
The tusks were not worth taking, and the party pursued its way up the
eastern bank of the river, where the herd had also evidently pursued its
way, and then on, on, across the country due east, in the track they had
followed since morning.
As they left the river-bed a tiny dot in the sky above, which they had not
noticed, enlarged, and like a stone from the blue fell a vulture. It lit
on the carcass; then came a kite slanting down to the feast, and then from
the blue, like stones dropped from the careless hand of a giant, vulture
after vulture.