or five or ten
terrible seconds. The dew from the trees above spattered down like rain
on the unseen backs, and a dull booming noise began, not very loud at
first, and Little Toomai could not tell what it was. But it grew and
grew, and Kala Nag lifted up one forefoot and then the other, and
brought them down on the ground--one-two, one-two, as steadily as
trip-hammers. The elephants were stamping all together now, and it
sounded like a war drum beaten at the mouth of a cave. The dew fell from
the trees till there was no more left to fall, and the booming went on,
and the ground rocked and shivered, and Little Toomai put his hands up
to his ears to shut out the sound. But it was all one gigantic jar that
ran through him--this stamp of hundreds of heavy feet on the raw earth.
Once or twice he could feel Kala Nag and all the others surge forward
a few strides, and the thumping would change to the crushing sound of
juicy green things being bruised, but in a minute or two the boom
of feet on hard earth began again. A tree was creaking and groaning
somewhere near him. He put out his arm and felt the bark, but Kala Nag
moved forward, still tramping, and he could not tell where he was in the
clearing. There was no sound from the elephants, except once, when two
or three little calves squeaked together. Then he heard a thump and a
shuffle, and the booming went on. It must have lasted fully two hours,
and Little Toomai ached in every nerve, but he knew by the smell of the
night air that the dawn was coming.

The morning broke in one sheet of pale yellow behind the green hills,
and the booming stopped with the first ray, as though the light had
been an order. Before Little Toomai had got the ringing out of his head,
before even he had shifted his position, there was not an elephant in
sight except Kala Nag, Pudmini, and the elephant with the rope-galls,
and there was neither sign nor rustle nor whisper down the hillsides to
show where the others had gone.

Little Toomai stared again and again. The clearing, as he remembered it,
had grown in the night. More trees stood in the middle of it, but the
undergrowth and the jungle grass at the sides had been rolled back.
Little Toomai stared once more. Now he understood the trampling. The
elephants had stamped out more room--had stamped the thick grass and
juicy cane to trash, the trash into slivers, the slivers into tiny
fibers, and the fibers into hard earth.

"Wah!" said Little Toom