ild rushing together of
thousands of crowded bodies, and a furious scrambling over backs,
till the scuffing thud of innumerable feet over the earth rose to a
reverberating murmur as of distant thunder, here and there pierced by
the strange, wild cry of the rabbit in distress.

The line of vehicles was halted. To go forward now meant to trample
the rabbits under foot. The drive came to a standstill while the herd
entered the corral. This took time, for the rabbits were by now too
crowded to run. However, like an opened sluice-gate, the extending
flanks of the entrance of the corral slowly engulfed the herd. The mass,
packed tight as ever, by degrees diminished, precisely as a pool of
water when a dam is opened. The last stragglers went in with a rush, and
the gate was dropped.

"Come, just have a lock in here," called Annixter.

Hilma, descending from the carry-all and joined by Presley and Harran,
approached and looked over the high board fence.

"Oh, did you ever see anything like that?" she exclaimed.

The corral, a really large enclosure, had proved all too small for
the number of rabbits collected by the drive. Inside it was a living,
moving, leaping, breathing, twisting mass. The rabbits were packed two,
three, and four feet deep. They were in constant movement; those beneath
struggling to the top, those on top sinking and disappearing below
their fellows. All wildness, all fear of man, seemed to have entirely
disappeared. Men and boys reaching over the sides of the corral, picked
up a jack in each hand, holding them by the ears, while two reporters
from San Francisco papers took photographs of the scene. The noise made
by the tens of thousands of moving bodies was as the noise of wind in a
forest, while from the hot and sweating mass there rose a strange odor,
penetrating, ammoniacal, savouring of wild life.

On signal, the killing began. Dogs that had been brought there for that
purpose when let into the corral refused, as had been half expected,
to do the work. They snuffed curiously at the pile, then backed off,
disturbed, perplexed. But the men and boys--Portuguese for the most
part--were more eager. Annixter drew Hilma away, and, indeed, most of
the people set about the barbecue at once.

In the corral, however, the killing went forward. Armed with a club in
each hand, the young fellows from Guadalajara and Bonneville, and the
farm boys from the ranches, leaped over the rails of the corral. They
walke