Quorn used the _ankus_ then. He used it cruelly. Voice, knees, _ankus_, all together urged the elephant to turn left. Once again Asoka curled his trunk. He did not hesitate. He caught a glimpse of the river between the trees, swung left between two blazing fires that almost singed his flanks and scooted for the friendly water where he knew no fire could follow. Quorn had forgotten the waterfall. There was a fifty-foot drop, heavy water plunging onto crags, and he could hear the roar of it as the river bank broke beneath Asoka's weight and the monster plunged in head-first, turning almost a somersault, displacing tons of water. How Quorn hung on he never knew. He was half-drowned. For awhile he was conscious of nothing except the need to cling with heels and hands and knees, and to keep Asoka, if he could, from being swept down-river and on to the crags below the fall. That thought obsessed him. Almost the first clear glimpse he had was of the river bank a hundred yards away, and of the roaring falls not fifty feet beyond him on his left hand. He could see the pale-green film of the crest of the plunging water. In the same moment he knew that the Ranee was no longer in the _howdah_. For a moment--just one moment--he ceased to care then whether he went over the falls or not. The universe went blank. He had not known how much he loved the Ranee. Then, as suddenly, a rage took hold of him. He beat Asoka with his fists. "You big bum! Turn and find her!" But Asoka was cooling his hot flanks, comfortable, careless--as indifferent to the world he had left behind as he was to waterfalls. He had fled from terror. He had found peace, that included Quorn with no _ankus_ in his hand. Quorn's fists were funny. He submerged himself, breathing through his trunk that stuck a foot above the water, giving Quorn a bath, too. Possibly he thought his friend Quorn would enjoy that. Then, because the water, and the sense of safety, and the physical reaction made him happy, he amused himself and drove Quorn nearly frantic by pretending that the current was drawing him over the waterfall. He let himself drift until the water thundered in Quorn's ears and the glassy curve of the descending wave was almost within hand-reach; then he slowly swam upstream--only to repeat the performance again, and again, and again. At last, when he was nice and cool and the thought of grass seemed good to him, he permitted himself to recognize that he was being ordered out on dry land. Dry land be it, then. But not the bank where horror had pursued him. Whenever Quorn tried to turn him toward the south bank, he submerged himself, pretending he supposed Quorn wanted that; and it was on the north bank that he emerged at last, ten feet above the waterfall, as pleasant-tempered as he had been frantic half an hour ago.