Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/281

 Rh from the motion of her hand discerned at once what she wanted and shoved under her palm the end of his trunk, which was over two yards in length.

Nell began to stroke the trunk; at first carefully with one hand, afterwards with both, and finally embraced it with both arms and hugged it with perfectly childish trust.

The elephant stepped from one foot to the other and continually gurgled from joy.

After a while he wound the diminutive body of the girl with his trunk and, lifting her up, began to swing her lightly right and left.

"More! More!" cried Nell, intensely amused.

And the play lasted quite a long time and afterwards the little girl, now entirely bold, invented a new one.

Finding herself on the ground, she tried to climb on the elephant's fore legs, as on a tree, or, hiding behind them, she asked whether he could find her. But at these frolics she observed one thing, namely, that numerous thorns were stuck in his hind legs; from these the powerful beast could not free himself, first because he could not conveniently reach his hind legs with his trunk, and again because he evidently feared to wound the finger with which the trunk ended and without which he would lose his skill and cleverness. Nell was not at all aware that such thorns in the feet are a real plague to elephants in India and still more in the African jungles composed mainly of thorny plants. As, however, she felt sorry for the honest giant, without any thought, having squatted near his foot, she began to extract delicately at first the bigger splinters and afterwards the smaller, at which work she did not cease to babble and assure the elephant that she would not leave a single one. He understood excellently what she was concerned with, and bending his legs at the knee showed in this manner that on the soles