“Say what you like, but I’m certain that he is very wise, and that he can be readily tamed at once.”
“Whether readily and at once I’m not sure, but he can be tamed. The African elephant is wilder than the Asiatic, but I believe that Hannibal, for instance, used African beasts.”
“Who was Hannibal?”
Stasch looked indulgently and pityingly at her.
“Of course,” he said, “at your age you are not expected to know—Hannibal was a great leader of the Carthaginian army, which used elephants in the war with the Romans, and as Carthage was in Africa, he was obliged to use African elephants.”
The conversation was interrupted by a tremendous trumpeting of the elephant, which, after having satisfied his hunger and thirst, began—either from joy or longing to be free—to signal with his trunk. Saba sat up and began to bark, and Stasch said:
“See what you have done? Now he is calling his friends. A nice story if a whole herd were to approach.”
“He will tell the others that we were good to him,” answered Nell hastily.
But Stasch, who really was not at all worried (because he reckoned that, even if several were to come along, the light of the fire would frighten them away), laughed defiantly and said:
“Well, well! But if elephants should appear, you will not cry for fear; oh, no!—your eyes would only perspire as they have done twice before!”