mstances,
Berselius determined to halt for the night.

Some small trees and bushes were cut to make a camp fire, and when they
had finished supper Berselius, still with his back to the tree, sat
talking to Adams by the light of the crackling branches.

He did not seem in the least put out with his failure.

"The rains will be on us in a week or two," said he. "Then you will see
elephants all over this place. They lie up in the inaccessible places in
the dry season, but when the wet weather comes the herds spread over the
plains. Not such herds as the one we have been following--it is rarely one
comes across one like that. However, to-morrow we may have better luck
with them. Felix tells me that forty miles beyond there, where they have
gone, there are a lot of trees. They may stop and feed, and if they do, we
will have them. To-morrow I shall start light. Leave the main camp here.
You and I and Felix, and four of the best of those men, and the smallest
tent, enough stores for three or four days. Yes, to-morrow----" The man
dozed off, sleep-stricken, the pipe between his teeth.

"To-morrow!" Portentous word!

They retired to their tents. Two sentries were posted to keep the fire
going and to keep watch. The porters lay about, looking just like men who
had fallen in battle, and after awhile the sentries, having piled the fire
with wood, sat down, and the moon rose, flooding the whole wide land with
light.

She had scarcely lifted her own diameter above the horizon when the
sentries, flat on their backs, with arms extended, were sleeping as
soundly as the others. Brilliant almost as daylight, still and peaceful as
death, the light of the great moon flooded the land, paling the stars and
casting the shadows of the tents across the sleepers, and the wind, which
was now blowing from the west, shook the twigs of the tree, like skeleton
fingers, over the flicker of the red burning camp-fire.

Now, the great herd of elephants had been making, as Berselius imagined
possible, for the forest that lay forty miles to the east.

They had reached it before sundown, and had begun to feed, stripping
branches of their leaves, the enormous trunks reaching up like snakes and
whirling the leaves Catherine-wheellike down enormous throats; the purring
and grumbling of their cavernous bellies, the rubbing of rough shoulders
against the bark, the stamping of feet crushing the undergrowth, resounded
in echoes amongst the trees. The big bu