“They have probably placed a pointed stake in the pit,” observed Hendrik, as they approached, “and the animal is impaled upon it.”
On coming nearer to the place, they saw that there were people around the pit,—both men and women. One of the men, intensely Ethiopic in appearance, came forward as the hunting party approached, and by signs offered for sale the tusks of the elephant still roaring underneath them.
“We are safe with these people,” remarked Congo. “They are used to traders, and will do us no more harm than to cheat us in a bargain, if they can.”
On arriving at the pit, our adventurers saw that it was not a square hole with an upright stake in the centre, as Hendrik had supposed. It was oval at the top and contracted to a point at the bottom, in the shape of an inverted cone, leaving no level space on which the elephant could stand. Its four feet were jammed together; and, compelled to support the weight of its immense body in this position, the agony it suffered must have been as intense as the creature was capable of enduring.
This pit, the plan of which was devised with devilish ingenuity for producing unnecessary torture, was about nine feet long and apparently seven or eight in depth, and the struggles of the elephant only had the effect of wedging its huge feet more closely together and increasing its tortures.
Two pits had been dug but a short distance from one another; and the wisdom of this plan had a living illustration before their eyes. Although the two had been nicely concealed, and the excavated earth carried away from the place, both had been discovered by the elephant, but one of them too late. Had there been but one, it would not have been caught, for it evidently had placed a foot on the first, detected the hidden danger, and, while in the act of avoiding it, had fallen suddenly and irrecoverably on to the other.
All the men standing around were armed, the most of them with assegais or spears, but they were making no attempt to end the agony of the captured elephant.
Groot Willem stepped in front of it, and was raising the long barrel of his roer to the level of one of the elephant’s eyes, when he was stopped by two or three of the blacks, who rushed forward and restrained him from discharging the piece.
Congo, who had professed to understand what they said, told Willem that the elephant was not to be killed at present.
“What can be the reason of that?” exclaimed Arend. “Can they wish the animal to live, merely for the sake of witnessing its sufferings? It cannot be saved. It must die where it is now.”