"We had better go back," said Royce, "or they'll get into a panic. The row is terrific. A thousand cavalry couldn't make such an uproar.... Great Scott!"
AT THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF
Through the leafy screen of the forest a hundred yards away there had emerged a large elephant, plunging forward at a lumbering gallop with trunk uplifted. In another fraction of a second the whole of the light timber and brushwood at the edge of the forest appeared to dissolve, and a wild mob of scores of elephants burst like an enormous breaker upon the open space.
Petrified for a moment with amazement, the two Englishmen became suddenly alive to their peril. Whether they went on in the direction intended, or returned to their men, they would equally cut across the front of this stampeding herd and must be overwhelmed.
"Straight for the edge of the cliff!" cried Royce.
They dropped their rifles and dashed to the right. It was forty or fifty yards to the edge of the cliff; the elephants were already only about half that distance behind them, gaining moment by moment. The ground shook under the tremendous charge of the maddened beasts. To the fleeing men it seemed that the breath from the gaping mouths scorched them.
A small spur of the cliff jutted to the left. The runners swung round on to this and without a moments' pause took a header into the lake twenty feet below.
When they came up to the surface they had to fight for breath in a cauldron of broken water. They were both good swimmers, or they would never have survived the sort of Niagara swirl in which they were now hurled about and buffeted.