Elephant dance (1937)

long. For it is the same herd we saw. The big tusker is Elephants in the one that gave me such a thrill. Another tusker, al tne StOtkade most as big, they say, is one that has been caught before; there arc old rope marks on his legs. He is a 'bad one', therefore. But the tusker Fremlin had to shoot evidently did not belong to the herd. They are putting on a wretched show now. Every once in a while a maddened mother, with a high, piercing trumpet, will charge the stockade. But not the tuskers; they are not at all brave and use all their tusks and weight to hold the centre place and jab the lesser ones away. I am so afraid the babies will get crushed. They are sweet little fellows. I heard Captain Fremlin say: * Shall I shoot the poor creature?' A half-grown tusker was down in the mud on his side. By this time the whole stockade was a slimy, slippery mass of black mud like a stye, and smelling to heaven just like a stye. Sunday Morning. A baby goes down in the slippery mud of the We Retrieve stockade, under those huge milling bodies. It will be the Baby trampled. The Jemadar won't allow it; goes into the stockade, ropes the baby and pulls it to the barrier and they get it through. The little fellow isn't hurt, full of beans, and oh, how thirsty. It can't drink with its trunk, too young, but there's water on the ground and water in a shallow dish, and its silly little trunk 127