“I knew you would not hurt me,” repeated the girl, although still somewhat frightened.
The elephant flapped his huge ears, alternately extended and contracted his trunk, and gave the grunt of satisfaction that he always did when the girl approached the edge of the ravine.
Just as Stasch had once faced the lion, so now these two (Nell and the elephant) stood face to face—he, a monster resembling a house or a rock, and she a tiny crab that he, even if not angry, but merely careless, might trample under foot.
But the careful beast did not move an inch, and seemed delighted at beholding his little visitor.
Nell gradually took courage; at last, raising her eyes and looking up as if to a high roof, she timidly extended her hand and asked:
The elephant did not understand English, but he immediately knew what she meant from the motion of her hand, and pushed the end of his two-yard-long nose into the palm of her hand. Nell began to stroke the trunk, at first only with one hand and very carefully, then with both, and at last she threw both arms around it and clung to it with childish confidence.
The elephant moved from one foot to the other, and grunted with satisfaction.
Soon after, winding his trunk around the fragile body of the girl, he lifted her high and began gently to swing her from side to side.
This game lasted quite a while; the girl, who now had entire confidence in the elephant and was no longer afraid, thought of another plan, for on reaching the ground again she tried to climb up the foreleg of the elephant, as though climbing up a tree, or hid behind him, and asked him if he could find her. During these pranks she noticed that in the elephant’s feet, especially in its hind feet, there were a great many thorns, which the powerful animal was not able to extract, because, in the first place, he could not reach his hind legs readily with his trunk, and secondly, because he evidently was afraid of wounding the finger which forms the end of the trunk, and without which he would lose all his dexterity. Nell did not know that thorns in the feet torment Indian elephants, and especially their cousins in the African jungles, which mostly consist of prickly plants. Her sympathies were aroused for the kindly giant, and squatting down near one of his feet, she began to pull out the large thorns and then the small ones, chattering incessantly and assuring the elephant that she would not let a single one remain. He understood very well what was the matter, and bending his knee, he plainly showed that there were thorns in the soles of his feet between the hoofs protecting the toes, and these thorns were even more painful than the others.