With his eyes keenly scanning the road, he urged his team ahead by both voice and whip. Now on a slight down grade, the huge wagon rumbled along at considerable speed, occasionally jolting and jarring, as the wheels slipped into ruts or rolled through deep miry stretches.
Dave finally detected two faint spots of light struggling into view some distance ahead.
“It’s Scotty an’ Robins leadin’ the elephants,” explained Joe. “Know’d I ketch up with ’em soon. Hi, hi! Git ap! Say, this here is sure some storm, ain’t it, fellers? Lightning now, by Jingo!”
A glare had suddenly illumined the landscape, and in the instantaneous flash the forms of three elephants at the crest of a rise showed as blurred masses of dark.
“By George! It’s enough to give a chap the creeps for fair,” thought Victor, with a shiver.
Conversing was difficult. The three, though huddling under the umbrella as far as possible, were still the target for beating rain. At each flash of lightning the huge, unwieldy forms of Nero, Titan and Colossus loomed up more clearly, and, at length, when the leading horses began to strike their iron-shod hoofs in the muddy road close behind them, the lanterns in the hands of Scott and Robins described a flashing circle in the air.
Joe answered this salute with a lusty yell.
“We’re gittin’ there, fellers,” he added.
“We’re most swimmin’ there,” answered Robins, gruffly.
“And’ll soon need a raft,” put in Scotty.