ambur ranks. By a desperate effort they got
themselves turned, and went surging off to the left in a direction
parallel to the edge of the plain of death.

Thrilled with the wonder and the horror of it, Grom drew a deep breath
and relaxed the tension of his watching. He was just about to turn and
order the tribe forward again, when he was arrested by the sight of a
vast cloud of dust rolling up swiftly upon the left flank of the
retreating sambur.

A confused cry of alarm went up from the watching tribe, as they saw a
forest of waving trunks appear in the front of the dust-cloud. A
second or two more and a long array of mammoths emerged along the path
of the cloud. Among the mammoths, here and there, raced a black or a
white rhinoceros, or a towering, spotted giraffe. Behind this front
rank, vague and portentous through the veiling cloud, came further
colossal hordes, filling the distance as far as eye could see.

This advance looked as if nothing on earth, not even the lake of
pitch, could ever stop it, and certain of the tribe started to flee.
But Grom, after a moment of misgiving and hasty calculation, checked
the flight sternly. He must, at all risks see the incredible thing
that was about to happen. And he felt certain that, at this distance
out upon the crust of the gulf, the tribe would be secure.

The stupendous wave of dust and waving trunks and galloping black
bulks thundered up at a terrific pace, and fell with irresistible
impact upon the flank of the marching sambur. These unhappy beasts
went down like grass before it. They were rolled flat, trodden out
like a fire in thin grass, annihilated. And the screaming, trumpeting
monsters, hardly aware that there had been an obstacle in their path,
arrived at the edge of the canal.

Here and there an old bull, leading, took alarm, trumpeted wildly, and
strove to stop. But the belt of pitch was full to the brink with the
packed bodies of the sambur, and did not look to be a very serious
barrier to the spacious brown levels beyond it. Moreover, the panic of
a long flight was upon them, and the rear ranks were thrusting them
on. The trumpeting leaders were overborne in a twinkling. The
ponderous feet of the front rank sank into the mass of bodies and
horns and pitch, stumbled forward, belly deep, and strove to clamber
out upon the solid-looking further edge. With trunks eagerly
outstretched as if seeking to grip something, the huge, bat-eared
heads heaved themse