me, so when one of them stuck his spear almost up to the haft in my
side, I tossed him. I took him up lightly on my tusks and he lay still
at the far end of the ravine where I had dropped him. That stopped the
shouting; but it broke out again suddenly, for the women had come down
the wild vines on the walls, with their young on their shoulders, and
the wife of the man I had tossed found him. The noise of the hunters was
as nothing to the noise she made at me. Madness overtook her; she left
off howling over her man and seizing her son by the hand,--he was no
more than half-grown, not up to my shoulder,--she pushed him in front of
me. 'Take him! Take my son, Man-Killer!' she screamed. 'After you have
taken the best of the tribe, will you stop at a youngling?' Then all the
others screeched at her like gulls frightened from their rock, and
stopped silent in great fear to see what I would do about it.

"I did not know what to do, for there was no way I could tell her I was
sorry I had killed her husband; and the lad stood where she had pushed
him, not making any noise at all but a sharp, steady breathing. So I
took him up in my trunk, for, indeed, I did not know what to do, and as
I held him at the level of my eyes, I saw a strange thing,--that the boy
was not afraid. He was not in the least afraid, but very angry.

"'I hate you, Arrumpa,' he said, 'because you have killed my father. I
am too little to kill you for it now, but when I am a man I shall kill
you.' He struck me with his fists. 'Put me down, Man-Killer!'

"So I put him down. What else was there to do? And there was a sensation
in my breast, a sensation as of bending the knees and bowing the
neck--not at all unpleasant--He stood where I placed him, between my
tusks, and one of the hunters, who was a man in authority, called out to
him to come away while they killed me.