We Had By Now Joined The Rest Of The Party, And Were All Soon
Squattering About On Our Own Account In The Elephant Bath.
It was
shocking bad going - like a ploughed field exaggerated by a terrific
nightmare.
It pretty nearly pulled all the legs off me, and to this
hour I cannot tell you if it is best to put your foot into a
footmark - a young pond, I mean - about the size of the bottom of a
Madeira work arm-chair, or whether you should poise yourself on the
rim of the same, and stride forward to its other bank boldly and
hopefully. The footmarks and the places where the elephants had
been rolling were by now filled with water, and the mud underneath
was in places hard and slippery. In spite of my determination to
preserve an awesome and unmoved calm while among these dangerous
savages, I had to give way and laugh explosively; to see the portly,
powerful Pagan suddenly convert himself into a quadruped, while Gray
Shirt poised himself on one heel and waved his other leg in the air
to advertise to the assembled nations that he was about to sit down,
was irresistible. No one made such palaver about taking a seat as
Gray Shirt; I did it repeatedly without any fuss to speak of. That
lordly elephant-hunter, the Great Wiki, would, I fancy, have strode
over safely and with dignity, but the man who was in front of him
spun round on his own axis and flung his arms round the Fan, and
they went to earth together; the heavy load on Wiki's back drove
them into the mud like a pile-driver.
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