A camp fire to an angry elephant is the equivalent of a red rag to a bull.
Thus the dramatic element of uncertainty was introduced into the tragedy unfolding on the plains, and the great stars seemed to leap like expectant hearts of fire till the moon broke over the horizon, casting the flying shadows of the great beasts before them.
The first furious stampede had settled into a rapid trot, to a sound like the sound of a hundred muffled drums beating a rataplan.
Instinct told the herd that immediate danger was past, also that for safety they would have to cover an immense space of country; so they settled to the pace most suitable for the journey. And what a pace it was, and what a sight!
Drifting across the country before the great white moon, fantastic beasts and more fantastic shadows, in three divisions line ahead, with the lanes of moonlight ruled between each line; calves by the cows, bulls in the van, they went, keeping to the scent of the track they had come by as unswervingly as a train keeps to the metals.
The giraffe was still with them. He and his shadow, gliding with compass-like strides a hundred yards away from the southward column; and just as the scent of the camp came to his mammoth friends, the sight of the camp fire, like a red spark, struck his keen eyes.
With a rasping note of warning he swerved to the south.
Now was the critical moment. Everything lay with the decision of the bulls leading the van, who, with trunks flung up and crooked forward, were holding the scent as a man holds a line. They had only a moment of time, but he who knows the elephant folk knows well the rapidity with which their minds can reason, and from their action it would seem that the arbiters of Berselius's fate reasoned thus: "The enemy were behind; they are now in front. So be it. Let us charge."
And they charged, with a blast of trumpeting that shook the sky; with trunks flung up and forward-driving tusks, ears spread like great sails, and a sound like the thunder of artillery, they charged the scent, the body of the herd following the leaders, as the body of a battering-ram follows the head.
Adams, when he had flung himself down in his tent, fell asleep instantly. This sleep, which was profound and dreamless, lasted but half an hour, and was succeeded by a slumber in which, as in a darkened room where a magic-lantern is being operated, vivid and fantastic pictures arose before him. He was on the march with the column through a country infinite as is space; the road they were taking, like the road to the tombs of the Chinese kings, was lined on either side with animals done in stone. At first these were tigers, and then, as though some veil of illusion had been withdrawn, he discovered them to be creatures far larger and more cruel, remorseless, and fearful than tigers; they were elephants--great stone elephants that had been standing there under the sun from everlasting, and they dwindled in perspective from giants to pigmies and from pigmies to grains of sand, for they were the guardians of a road whose end was infinity.