It might have been eighty or a hundred years since the creature had first seen the light and started on its wonderful journey over mountains and plains through jungle and forest, lying down maybe only twenty times in all those years, wandering hither and thither, and knowing not that every step of its journey was a step closer to here.
Just this little piece of ground on which it lay had been plotted out for it a hundred years ago, and it had come to it by a million mazy paths, but not less surely than had it followed the leading of a faultlessly directed arrow.
The herd had left it here to die. Berselius, examining the body closely, could find no wound. He concluded that it had come to its end just as old men come to their end at last—the mechanism had failed, hindered, perhaps, by some internal disease, and it had lain down to wait for death.
The tusks were not worth taking, and the party pursued its way up the eastern bank of the river, where the herd had also evidently pursued its way, and then on, on, across the country due east, in the track they had followed since morning.
As they left the river-bed a tiny dot in the sky above, which they had not noticed, enlarged, and like a stone from the blue fell a vulture. It lit on the carcass; then came a kite slanting down to the feast, and then from the blue, like stones dropped from the careless hand of a giant, vulture after vulture.
CHAPTER XIX
THE GREAT HERD
Félix kept his place beside Adams at the head of the column. The black seemed morose, and at the same time, excited.