“They’re—­No.  What is it?  What are they doing?”

All round the circle of besiegers there was an eerie hush.  No voice was heard.  All—­the Rajah, the flag-bearer, Brahmins, soldiers, coolies—­had turned their faces away from the bungalow and were staring into the distance.  And as the few survivors of the garrison looked up over the barricade an incredible sight met their eyes.

From the far-off forest, bursting out at every point of the long-stretching wall of dark undergrowth that hemmed in the wide estate, wild elephants appeared.  Over the furrowed acres they streamed in endless lines, trampling down the ordered stretch of green bushes.  In scores, in hundreds, they came, silently, slowly; the great heads nodding to the rhythm of their gait, the trunks swinging, the ragged ears flapping, as they advanced.  Converging as they came, they drew together in a solid mass that blotted out the ground, a mass sombre-hued, dark, relieved only by flashes of gleaming white.  For on either side of every massive skull jutted out the sharp-pointed, curving ivory.  Of all save one.

For the mammoth that led them, the splendid beast that captained the oncoming array of Titans under the ponderous strokes of whose feet the ground trembled, had one tusk, one only.  And as though the white flag were a magnet to him, he moved unerringly towards it, the immense, earth-shaking phalanx following him.

The awestruck crowds of armed men, so lately flushed with fanatical lust of slaughter, stood as though turned to stone, their faces set towards the terrifying onset.  Their pain unheeded, their groans silenced, the wounded staggered to their feet to look.  Even the dying strove to raise themselves on their arms from the reddened soil to gaze, and, gazing, fell back dead.  Slowly, mechanically, silently, the living gave way, the weapons dropping from their nerveless grip.  Step by step they drew back as if compelled by some strange mesmeric power.

And on the verandah the few survivors of the little band stood together, silent, amazed, scarce believing their eyes as they stared at the incredible vision.  All but Dermot.  His gaze was fixed on the leader of that terrible army; and he smiled, tenderly yet proudly.  His arm drew the girl beside him still closer to him, as he murmured: 

“He comes to save us for each other, beloved!”

Nothing was heard, save the dull thunder of the giant feet.  Then from the village the high-pitched shriek of a woman pierced the air and shattered the eerie silence of the terror-stricken crowds.  Murmurs, groans, swelled into shouts, wild yells, the appalling uproar of panic; and strong and weak, hale men and those from whose wounds the life-blood dripped, turned and fled.  Fled past their dead brothers, past the little group of leaders whose power to sway them had vanished before this awful menace.