The moonlight showed it all iron gray , except where some elephants stood upon it , and their shadows were inky black . Little Toomai looked , holding his breath , with his eyes starting out of his head , and as he looked , more and more and more elephants swung out into the open from between the tree trunks . Little Toomai could only count up to ten , and he counted again and again on his fingers till he lost count of the tens , and his head began to swim . Outside the clearing he could hear them crashing in the undergrowth as they worked their way up the hillside , but as soon as they were within the circle of the tree trunks they moved like ghosts . There were white-tusked wild males , with fallen leaves and nuts and twigs lying in the wrinkles of their necks and the folds of their ears ; fat , slow-footed she-elephants , with restless , little pinky black calves only three or four feet high running under their stomachs ; young elephants with their tusks just beginning to show , and very proud of them ; lanky , scraggy old-maid elephants , with their hollow anxious faces , and trunks like rough bark ; savage old bull elephants , scarred from shoulder to flank with great weals and cuts of bygone fights , and the caked dirt of their solitary mud baths dropping from their shoulders ; and there was one with a broken tusk and the marks of the full-stroke , the terrible drawing scrape , of a tiger 's claws on his side . They were standing head to head , or walking to and fro across the ground in couples , or rocking and swaying all by themselves -- scores and scores of elephants . Toomai knew that so long as he lay still on Kala Nag 's neck nothing would happen to him , for even in the rush and scramble of a Keddah drive a wild elephant does not reach up with his trunk and drag a man off the neck of a tame elephant . And these elephants were not thinking of men that night . Once they started and put their ears forward when they heard the chinking of a leg iron in the forest , but it was Pudmini , Petersen Sahib 's pet elephant , her chain snapped short off , grunting , snuffling up the hillside . She must have broken her pickets and come straight from Petersen Sahib 's camp ; and Little Toomai saw another elephant , one that he did not know , with deep rope galls on his back and breast . He , too , must have run away from some camp in the hills about . At last there was no sound of any more elephants moving in the forest , and Kala Nag rolled out from his station between the trees and went into the middle of the crowd , clucking and gurgling , and all the elephants began to talk in their own tongue , and to move about . Still lying down , Little Toomai looked down upon scores and scores of broad backs , and wagging ears , and tossing trunks , and little rolling eyes . He heard the click of tusks as they crossed other tusks by accident , and the dry rustle of trunks twined together , and the chafing of enormous sides and shoulders in the crowd , and the incessant flick and hissh of the great tails . Then a cloud came over the moon , and he sat in black darkness . But the quiet , steady hustling and pushing and gurgling went on just the same . He knew that there were elephants all round Kala Nag , and that there was no chance of backing him out of the assembly ; so he set his teeth and shivered . In a Keddah at least there was torchlight and shouting , but here he was all alone in the dark , and once a trunk came up and touched him on the knee . Then an elephant trumpeted , and they all took it up for five or ten terrible seconds . The dew from the trees above spattered down like rain on the unseen backs , and a dull booming noise began , not very loud at first , and Little Toomai could not tell what it was .
But it grew and grew , and Kala Nag lifted up one forefoot and then the other , and brought them down on the ground -- one-two , one-two , as steadily XXXXX trip-hammers .
Once as at in into off that to up within