Ten minutes or so more brought us to the eastern head of the lake, where the reeds whispered in the breath of the night wind like things alive.  As I expected, it proved to be a bare, open space where nothing seemed to grow.  Yes, and all about me were the decaying remains of elephants, hundreds of them, some with their bones covered in moss, that may have lain here for generations, and others more newly dead.  They were all old beasts as I could tell by the tusks, whether male or female.  Indeed about me within a radius of a quarter of a mile lay enough ivory to make a man very rich for life, since although discoloured, much of it seemed to have kept quite sound, like human teeth in a mummy case.  The sight gave me a new zest for life.  If only I could manage to survive and carry off that ivory!  I would.  In this way or in that I swore that I would!  Who could possibly die with so much ivory to be had for the taking?  Not that old hunter, Allan Quatermain.

Then I forgot about the ivory, for there in front of me, just where it should be, just as I had seen it in the dream-picture, was the bull elephant dying, a thin and ancient brute that had lived its long life to the last hour.  It searched about as though to find a convenient resting-place, and when this was discovered, stood over it, swaying to and fro for a full minute.  Then it lifted its trunk and trumpeted shrilly thrice, singing its swan-song, after which it sank slowly to its knees, its trunk outstretched and the points of its worn tusks resting on the ground.  Evidently it was dead.

I let my eyes travel on, and behold! about fifty yards beyond the dead bull was a mound of hard rock.  I watched it with gasping expectation and—­yes, on the top of the mound something slowly materialized.  Although I knew what it must be well enough, for a while I could not see quite clearly because there were certain little clouds about and one of them had floated over the face of the moon.  It passed, and before me, perhaps a hundred and forty paces away, outlined clearly against the sky, I perceived the devilish elephant of my vision.

Oh! what a brute was that!  In bulk and height it appeared to be half as big again as any of its tribe which I had known in all my life’s experience.  It was enormous, unearthly; a survivor perhaps of some ancient species that lived before the Flood, or at least a very giant of its kind.  Its grey-black sides were scarred as though with fighting.  One of its huge tusks, much worn at the end, for evidently it was very old, gleamed white in the moonlight.  The other was broken off about halfway down its length.  When perfect it had been malformed, for it curved downwards and not upwards, also rather out to the right.

There stood this mammoth, this leviathan, this monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, as I remember my old father used to call a certain gigantic and misshapen bull that we had on the Station, flapping a pair of ears that looked like the sides of a Kafir hut, and waving a trunk as big as a weaver’s beam—­whatever a weaver’s beam may be—­an appalling and a petrifying sight.