In a minute or two, hundreds of ugly flat-heads popped up, and the boat danced among them as they floundered about in the water.
“I hope they won’t upset us,” said Jack. “I wish you would land.”
Mopsa said she would rather not, because she did not like the hairy elephants.
“There are no such things as hairy elephants,” said Jack, in his dream; but he had hardly spoken when out of a wood close at hand some huge creatures, far larger than our elephants, came jogging down to the water. There were forty or fifty of them, and they were covered with what looked like tow. In fact, so coarse was their shaggy hair that they looked as if they were dressed in door-mats; and when they stood still and shook themselves, such clouds of dust flew out that, as it swept over the river, it almost stifled Jack and Mopsa.
“Odious!” exclaimed Jack, sneezing. “What terrible creatures these are!”
“Well,” answered Mopsa, at the other end of the boat (but he could hardly see her for the dust), “then why do you dream of them?”
Jack had just decided to dream of something else, when, with a noise greater than fifty trumpets, the elephants, having shaken out all the dust, came thundering down to the water to bathe in the liquid mud. They shook the whole country as they plunged; but that was not all. The awful river-horses rose up, and, with shrill screams, fell upon them, and gave them battle; while up from every rill peeped above the rushes frogs as large as oxen, and with blue and green eyes that gleamed like the eyes of cats.
“THE AWFUL RIVER-HORSES ROSE UP AND, WITH SHRILL SCREAMS, FELL UPON THEM.”
The frogs’ croaking, and the shrill trumpeting of the elephants, together with the cries of the river-horses, as all these creatures fought with horn and tusk, and fell on one another, lashing the water into whirlpools, among which the boat danced up and down like a cork—the blinding spray, and the flapping about of great bats over the boat and in it—so confused Jack that Mopsa had spoken to him several times before he answered.