A THRILLING CHARGE 
209 
mal was not dead, but was thrashing madly about 
as if desperately wounded. Hassan said it was the 
young elephant and that the older one was dead, 
but this could not be determined without pushing 
on through the reeds until we would be almost upon 
them. This course seemed too dangerous to try. 
The river at this point was absolutely impassable 
for animals. The banks were ten feet high and per¬ 
pendicular. The water was perhaps five or six feet 
deep and the width of the swift stream not over 
twenty or thirty feet. The trees had interlaced their 
roots and branches across the river and in the water. 
No animal, not a tree climber, could possibly cross 
the stream on account of the straight up and down 
banks. 
So after a time we crept along through the grass 
at the edge of the stream until we reached a point 
probably forty yards from where the elephants 
doubtless were, although quite hidden from our 
view. There was still a tremendous threshing in the 
low branches of the trees and in order to see the 
animals we had to creep cautiously across the penin¬ 
sula to a point about half-way, where a large, rotten, 
dead tree stood. This gave us cover and from its 
screen we could see the three elephants, only fifteen 
yards away. The head of the big one was still up 
and it was turned directly at us. It was so close 
and so big that the effect was terrifying. 
“Mkubwa” whispered Sulimani, and that means 
“big.” So the big elephant, instead of being dead, 
was still alive, with an impassable river at its feet 
