King Erigalla sent out five hundred horsemen and a hundred and fifty chariots to recover his elephants. When they came to the camp of Chalginna, he did not run but gave battle and drove them back to the very gates of the city. Then he dared the king to meet him in the great river valley; but the king declined, feeling that now he should reserve his strength, expecting an assault upon the city.
Again by night Chalginna visited the river pastures, having a dual purpose; one was to kill the bull elephant, but he had been taken to the palace garden, where, soothed by the cooling spray from the great fountain, he was being nursed back to his great strength; the other was to cut down a great tree and a number of saplings, which were dragged to the desert camp by thirty work camels and need in the construction of a portable ram. The great tree trunk was rigged to swing from a frame on raw hide belts and a platform built on either side on which men might stand and, grasping pegs driven in the log, propel it back and forth with great force. Above the whole Chalginna built an oval canopy of saplings, broad enough not only to cover the machine, but to shield the four great elephants which would bear it. When finished the strongest of his men, twelve on each side, took places on the platforms; and for some days men and elephants were drilled in its manipulation. When the training was completed, Chalginna having gathered six thousand troopers, five thousand on camels and a thousand horsemen, at twilight started on the march against the city of Eridu. The portable ram, suggesting an immense land tortoise, led the advance; Chalginna and his staff rode beside it on the other elephants and the troopers followed.
Gisco, the king's bull elephant, though fully recovered, was still chained to a stake in the palace garden. There he stood, swaying his great body, feeding upon rank and tender rushes brought from the river marsh; and to drive away the flies and reduce the heat occasionally sprayed his body and the earth around with water from the fountain. The wind blew from the desert. Shortly past midnight he ceased swaying and lifted his great ears, stood for a moment as a great beast of bronze; then he raised his trunk aloft and trumpeted an alarm that was heard by half the city. The wind had borne to his keen sense of smell the pungent odor of the camel, the scent of the missing from his herd and given warning that his old enemies, Chalginna's troopers, were at hand.