held him there
despite himself, not from muscular rigidity or spasm, but just because
they refused to let go. They were doing the business of clinging to safety
on their own account, and he had to _think himself free_. There was no use
in ordering them to release him, he had to reason with them. Then, little
by little, they (fingers first) returned to discipline, and he slipped
down and came to earth, literally, for his knees gave under him and he
fell.

He was a very brave man and a very strong man, but now, just released from
Death, now that all danger was over, he was very much afraid. He had seen
and heard Life: Life whipped to fury, screaming and in maelstrom action,
Life in its loudest and most appalling phase, and he felt as a man might
feel to whom the gods had shown a near view of that tempest of fire we
call the sun.

He sat up and looked around him on the pitiable ruins of the camp on which
a tornado could not have wrought more destruction. Something lay
glittering in the moonlight close to him. He picked it up. It was his
shaving-glass, the most fragile thing in all their belongings, yet
unbroken. Tent-poles had been smashed to matchwood, cooking utensils
trodden flat, guns broken to pieces; yet this thing, useless and fragile,
had been carefully preserved, watched over by some god of its own.

He was dropping it from his fingers when a cry from behind him made him
turn his head.

A dark figure was approaching in the moonlight.

It was the Zappo Zap. The man whom Berselius, with splendid heroism, had
tried to save. Like the looking-glass, and protected, perhaps, by some god
of his own, the columns of destruction had passed him by. The column of
cows with their calves had passed him on the other side. Old hunters say
that elephants will not trouble with a dead man, and Felix, though
awakened by the shaking of the earth, had lain like a dead man as the
storm swept by.

He was very much alive, now, and seemingly unconcerned as he came toward
Adams, stood beside him, and looked around.

"All gone dam," said Felix. And volumes would not have expressed the
situation more graphically. Then the savage, having contemplated the scene
for a moment, rushed forward to a heap of stuff--broken boxes and what
not--dragged something from it and gave a shout.

It was the big elephant rifle, with its cartridge-bag attached. The stock
was split, but the thing was practically intact. Felix waved it over his
head and l