Ivan Yefremov - The Land of Foam

The young elephants tied to the trees stuck up their tails and made frantic efforts to get at the men, trying to reach them with their trunks. The elephant drivers placed their trained animals one on either side of the captives. They squeezed them between their bodies and led them away to the village. As a precaution ropes were fixed to the neck and hind-legs of every young elephant; fifteen men in front and behind held the ropes. The tired faces of the hunters, haggard from the terrific strain of the hunt, were filled with gloom. Eleven motionless bodies had already been laid out on the wattle platforms on the backs of elephants, and hunters were still beating the bushes in search of another two missing men.

The elephants with the captives were led away, and the hunters sat or lay on the ground resting after the fray. The friends went up to the chief hunter and asked him whether there was anything they could do to help. The chief hunter looked at them ‘angrily and said brusquely:

“Help? What can you do to help, strangers? It’s been a hard hunt and we’ve lost many brave men. Wait where you were told and don’t get in our way!’’

The friends went back to the rocks and sat down apart from the hunters, afraid to quarrel with people on whom their entire future depended.

Cavius, Pandion and Kidogo lay down to wait until they were called, and talked softly amongst themselves. The sun was going down and long shadows from the battlemented rocks stretched out into the plain.

“Still I can’t understand why the huge elephants don’t kill all the people in battle,” said Cavius thoughtfully. “If the elephants were to fight better, they could crush all the hunters to dust…”

“You’re right,” agreed Kidogo. “It’s the good luck of man that the elephant is fainthearted.”

“How can that be?” asked the astonished Etruscan.

“It’s simply because the elephant isn’t used to fighting. He’s so big and strong that no other animal ever attacks him; he’s not threatened with danger since only man is bold enough to hunt him. This is why the grey giant is not a reliable fighter, his will is easily broken, and he can’t stand up to a long fight if he doesn’t crush his enemy immediately. The buffalo is a different case. If the buffalo possessed the size and intellect of the elephant, all those who hunt him would be killed.”

Cavius muttered something indefinite under his breath; he did not know whether to believe the Negro or not; but then he recalled the indecision which he himself had seen the elephants display at the most decisive moment of the battle and said no more.

“The spears the Elephant People use are quite different from ours; the blades are eight fingers wide,” put in Pandion. “What enormous strength must be needed to strike with such a spear.”

Kidogo suddenly stood up and listened. Not a sound came from the side where the hunters had been resting. The sky, golden in the setting sun, was rapidly darkening.

“They have gone away and forgotten us,” exclaimed the Negro and ran out from behind the rocks.

Not a soul was to be seen anywhere. In the distance scarcely audible voices were calling to one another; the hunters were on their way back to the village without the three friends.

“Let’s follow them immediately, the journey is a long one,” said Pandion hastily, but the Negro held his friend back.

“It’s too late, the sun will disappear soon and we’ll lose our way in the dark,” said Kidogo. “Better wait until the moon comes up, it won’t be long.”

Pandion and Cavius agreed and lay down to rest.

Hyenas barked and jackals howled plaintively in the impenetrable darkness. Kidogo was worried, he kept looking towards the east where an ash-grey strip of sky above the treetops heralded the rising moon.

“I don’t know if there are any wild dogs here or not,” muttered Kidogo. “If there are we’ll be in trouble. Dogs attack together, the whole pack of them, and overcome even the buffalo…”

The sky grew lighter, the grim, black rocks turned to silver, and the trees in the plain showed up as black silhouettes. The moon had risen.

The three friends, their spears grasped firmly in their hands, set out southwards along the chain of rocky hills. They hastened away from the gloomy battlefield where the carrion eaters were feasting on the dead elephants. The howls died away behind them, the plain around them seemed dead, and only the swift steps of the three men broke the silence of the night.

Kidogo carefully avoided dense groves of trees and thickets of bushes that formed mysterious black hills towering here and there above the grass. The Negro chose his path through open spaces that gleamed like white lakes in a labyrinth of black islands of vegetation.

The chain of rocky hills turned to the west, and a narrow strip of forest kept the friends close to the rocks. Kidogo turned to the right and led the way across a long, stony open space, that sloped down in a southerly direction. Suddenly the Negro stopped, turned abruptly round and stood listening. Pandion and Cavius strained their ears but not a sound could they hear in any direction. As before, absolute silence reigned supreme.

The Negro went hesitantly forward, increasing his pace, and did not answer the whispered questions of the Etruscan and the Hellene. They had advanced a further thousand cubits, when the Negro again stopped. His eyes showed a troubled gleam in the bright moonlight.

“Something’s following us,” he whispered and lay down with his ear to the ground.

Pandion followed his friend’s example, but Cavius remained standing, straining his eyes to see through the silver curtain of moonlight.

Pandion lay with his ear pressed to the hot stony earth and at first could hear nothing but his own breathing. The silent, menacing uncertainty alarmed him.

Suddenly a weak, scarcely audible sound was transmitted through the earth from a distance. The regularly repeated sounds grew more frequent — click, click, click. Pandion held up his head and the sounds stopped immediately. Kidogo continued listening for some time, pressing first one, then the other ear to the ground; then he leaped to his feet like a spring released.

“Some big animal is following us, it’s a bad thing that I don’t know what animal. Its claws are outside, like those of a dog or hyena, so that it isn’t a lion or a leopard…”

“A buffalo or rhinoceros,” suggested Cavius.

Kidogo shook his head energetically.

“No, it’s a beast of prey,” he snapped with confidence. “We must find cover… no trees near us,” he whispered, looking round in alarm.

The country ahead of them was an almost level stony stretch of open ground with occasional tufts of grass and small bushes.

“Forward, as fast as we can!” Kidogo hurried them on, and the friends ran along carefully, trying to avoid the long thorns on the bushes and the cracks in the dried earth.

Now the scratching of heavy talons on the stony ground could be clearly heard behind them. The increased frequency of the regular clatter of the claws told the friends that the animal had also broken into a run. Click, click, click — the sounds drew nearer and nearer.

Pandion looked over his shoulder and saw a tall swaying silhouette, a grey phantom pursuing them.

Kidogo kept turning his head this way and that, trying to pick out a tree somewhere ahead of them and to judge the speed of the unknown animal. He realized that the trees were too far away and that the friends would not be able to reach them in time.