And he is right, for, as the sky flashes rosy red, we see you afar off coming across the fields. A sight you are, indeed, as you come nearer, with your torn clothes and scratched faces! But Joyce's mother gives a cry of joy and precipitates herself across the flat and along the gangway, hatless, and clasps her daughter in her arms as if she would never let her go again. You and I are not so emotional, but I'm jolly glad to see you again!
You shall tell your story in your own words. I wrote it down exactly as you told it to me, so that your people might have it.
THE FIRST THING WE SAW WERE TWO HUGE ELEPHANTS.
CHAPTER XXV
JIM'S STORY
Joyce's a brick. She can do most things boys can, and we soon began racing each other along those little raised bits of earth between the beds in the paddy fields. I splashed right in once or twice and we shrieked with laughter. By and by we found ourselves through that and out on a flat place covered with thorns. They weren't very high mostly, and we didn't feel them through our shoes, but now and again one caught us on the ankles and then didn't we hop! By the time we had reached the road I suppose we had lost sight of you altogether. I didn't think about it. I just had a feeling we must scramble on in that fizzing red sunset light, and then when we got tired turn plump round and go straight back to the ship the same way. I didn't really think about it, though.
The road? Yes, it was a sort of a road, at least it was a clear space marked all over with deep ruts and lined by little trees, and it ran ever so far both ways, as Euclid says a line does. The first thing we saw were two huge elephants, striding along with a wooden thing on the neck of one, banging and rattling as his head went up and down. A man was sitting on his neck and he took no notice of us at all, but they—the elephants, I mean—just loped along in that swinging way they do; I think it must make anyone sea-sick to be on their backs. We stared at them till they got far away. Then I discovered that the little trees were mimosa, which shrivel up when you touch them. They had dropped seeds on the ground, I suppose, for under them were tiny little mimosas, not trees but scrub stuff. Joyce had never seen any, and when I rubbed my hand across them and she saw them wither up, she cried out, "What a shame! Dear little things, don't be afraid of me!" and plumped herself down beside them to cuddle them, but they withered more than ever. How we laughed! The ones I had withered first were just beginning to come right again, and I was going to make them shut up once more, and she had caught my hand to stop me, when we heard a noise and looked up, and there was a great buffalo coming right at us with his nose stuck up straight in the air as if he smelt something nasty. You never saw anything so comic! Joyce cried out, "Oh, what a darling!" But into my head, quick as lightning, came what you told me about buffaloes, who hate Europeans savagely, though a Burmese child of four can drive them with a twig. I grabbed Joyce's hand and pulled her up, and then I saw he was coming for us and no mistake, with his nose up in that absurd fashion, and his great horns sticking out. We made a bolt for the nearest tree just as the buffalo plunged across the place we had been, like a runaway motor-car. Then he stopped and looked funny. All at once he caught sight of my topee, which had fallen off and rolled away a bit, and up went his nose again, and when he reached it down went his head and into it like a battering-ram; and didn't he make the clods fly as he spiked his horns into it. The trees were not very high, and had smooth stems so far up, and then a lot of branches. If we could get up there we'd be all right.