128 The Wild Elephant. 



follow at first slowly, then at a quicker pace, and at last 

 the whole herd would rush off furiously to renew the 

 often-baffled attempt to storm the stockade. 



There was a strange combination of the sublime and 

 the ridiculous in these abortive onsets ; the appearance 

 of prodigious power in their ponderous limbs, coupled 

 with the almost ludicrous shuffle of their clumsy gait, 

 and the fury of their apparently resistless charge, con- 

 verted in an instant into timid retreat. They rushed 

 madly down the enclosure, their backs arched, their 

 tails extended, their ears spread, and their trunks raised 

 high above their heads, trumpeting and uttering shrill 

 screams, yet when one step further would have dashed 

 the opposing fence into fragments, they stopped short 

 on a few white rods being pointed at them through the 

 paling ; ' and, on catching the derisive shouts of the 

 crowd, they turned in utter discomfiture, and after an 

 objectless circle through the corral, they paced slowly 

 back to their melancholy halting-place in the shade. 



The crowd, chiefly comprised of young men and boys, 

 exhibited astonishing nerve and composure at such 

 moments, rushing up to the point towards which the 

 elephants charged, pointing their wands at their trunks, 

 and keeping up the continual cry of whoop ! whoop I 

 which invariably turned them to flight. 



' The fact of the elephant exhibiting into the circus during the triumph of 



timidity, on having a long rod pointed Metellus, after the conquest of the 



towards him, was known to the Ro- Carthaginians in Sicily, and driven 



mans ; and Pliny, quoting from the round the area by ivorkinen holding 



annals of Piso, relates, that in order to blunted spears, — " Ab operariis hastas 



inculcate contempt for want of courage prsepilatas habentibus, percircum totuni 



in the elephant, they were introduced actos." (AVjA Hist. lib. viii. c. 6.^ 



