Berselius had not reckoned on this. No man can reckon on what the wilderness will do. The oldest hunter is the man who knows most surely the dramatic surprises of the hunt, but the oldest hunter would never have taken this into his calculations.
Here, back along the road they had travelled all day, was coming, not a peacefully moving herd, but a storm of elephants. Elephants who had been disturbed in feeding, shot at, and shot after, filled with the dull fury that dwells in an elephant’s brain for days, and with the instinct for safety that would carry them perhaps a hundred miles before dawn.
And right in the track of this terrible army of destruction lay the sleeping camp, the camp fire smouldering and fluttering its flames on the wind.
And the wind had shifted!
With the dark, as though the scene had been skilfully prepared by some infernal dramatist, just as the cover of night shut down tight and sealed, and suddenly, like a box-lid that had been upheld by the last rays of the setting sun, just as the great stars burst out above as if at the touch of an electric button, the wind shifted right round and blew due east.
This change of wind would dull the sound of the oncoming host to the people at the camp; at the same time it would bring the scent of the human beings to the elephants.
The effect of this might be to make them swerve away from the line they were taking, but it would be impossible to tell for certain. The only sure thing was, that if they continued in their course till within eyeshot of the camp fire, they would charge it and destroy everything round about it in their fury.
A camp fire to an angry elephant is the equivalent of a red rag to a bull.
Thus the dramatic element of uncertainty was introduced into the tragedy unfolding on the plains, and the great stars seemed to leap like expectant hearts of fire till the moon broke over the horizon, casting the flying shadows of the great beasts before them.
The first furious stampede had settled into a rapid trot, to a sound like the sound of a hundred muffled drums beating a rataplan.