24 The Life of an Elephant 



through the daylight hours. To him came 

 suddenly a loud hissing sound, followed by the 

 thud of a heavy blow on the earth. He leapt 

 to one side with an agility remarkable in one 

 so clumsily built, and saw within a few yards 

 an elephant standing with its back to a rock, at 

 its feet a huddled mass which he suspected to 

 be a new-born calf. He did not stay to in- 

 vestigate. With a bound he hurled himself 

 into the underwood, and, as the noise of his 

 headlong flight died away in the forest, the 

 elephant commenced to rumble deeply with a 

 sound like the purrings of some gigantic cat, 

 undecided whether to be pleased or angry. 



The calf lay extended at his mother's feet, 

 under the shelter of her head and trunk, as yet 

 too weak to rise ; from time to time she waved 

 the flies away with her trunk or gently kicked 

 the soft earth so that it fell in light showers on 

 his body. On such occasions her foot struck 

 the ground so near to the reclining calf that 

 one could not but wonder at the extreme 

 accuracy of her movements, an accuracy which 

 in the human race is only acquired by the 



