ious exaltation, like
that which comes from drink, only finer far and more ethereal. The column
seemed marching far swifter than it was marching in reality, the vast
sunlit land seemed vaster even than it was; the wind-blown grass, the far
distant trees, the circling skyline, all spoke of freedom unknown to man:
the freedom of the herd they were pursuing; the freedom of the bird flying
overhead; the freedom of the wind blowing in the grass; the freedom of the
limitless, endless, sunlit country. Meridians of silence, and light, and
plains, and trees, and mountains, and forests. Parallels of virgin land.

He was feeling what the bird knows and feels when it beats up the
mountains or glides down the vales of air; what the elephant herd knows
and feels when it moves over mountains and across plains; what the
antelopes know when distance calls them.

A shout from Felix, and the Zappo Zap came running up the line; his head
was flung up and he was sniffing the air. Then, walking beside Adams, he
stared ahead right away over the country before them to the far skyline.

"Elephant smell," he replied, when Adams asked him what was the matter;
then, turning, he shouted some words in the native back to Berselius, and
tramped on beside Adams, his nose raised to the wind, of which each puff
brought the scent stronger.

Adams could smell nothing, but the savage could tell that right ahead
there were elephants; close up, too, yet not a sign of them could be
seen.

This puzzled him, and what puzzles a savage frightens him.

His nose told him that here were elephants in sight of his eyes; his eyes
told him that there were none.

All at once the column came to a dead halt. Porters flung down their loads
and cried out in fright. Even Berselius stood stock-still in
astonishment.

From the air, blown on the wind from no visible source, came the shrill
trumpeting of an elephant.

There, in broad daylight, close up to them, the sound came with the shock
of the supernatural. Nothing stirred in all the land but the grass bending
to the wind. There was not even a bird in the air; yet close to them an
elephant was trumpeting shrilly and fiercely as elephants trumpet when
they charge.

Again came the sound, and once again, but this time it broke lamentably to
a complaint that died away to silence.

Instantly the Zappo Zap came to himself. He knew that sound. An elephant
was dying somewhere near by, caught in a trap possibly. He rushed d