Elephant dance (1937)

three enormous, moving, black shadows, silhouetted Visit Lines in the light of a hundred glimmering fires as we *t**W& stepped over them, threading the 'line'. Clapping and yelling behind us announced our coming to those before, so that those ahead should not be caught napping. But how soundly they slept! Twice we stepped over a sleeping form, lying across the path, wrapped head and all in the single cloth they wear. 'Lazy one, that can only eat and sleep, why don't you attend to your fire?' our mahout called down from his high seat, and as Rajpeary's huge pads so gently and carefully stepped over them, they might be glad it wasn't a ruder awakening. They have been watching now, night and day, for eight days. And how hard to believe that there was anything in that soft, sweet jungle beyond, sweet with the smoke of sandalwood. For there is nothing sinister about the jungle, not so much so as in those dark, witch-like forests of Germany. It is all sweet and kind. Among the trees, so tremendously tall, stretching upward, we might have been in a cathedral. I cannot understand these fierce hunters with their tales of ferocious experience. As Bob said, he felt like a murderer watching that charming domestic scene of the wild families at the river side, thinking what a bad time we are going to give them, when all they ask is to be let alone in their paradise. The elephant has no living 123