The people of Girsu were nomads; and worshiped the sun, the moon and water. Their chief had a half grown son, born to sit in the light of the sun, Chalginna. His sole possessions were a light, keen spear, a swift white camel, a water bottle made from a goat skin and a mat on which to sleep. In the stillness of the night as he rested on his mat of camel cloth, though he slept too soundly to hear the roar of the camels or the bleating of the goats or the barking of the jackal, he saw the city and dreamed of its conquest and pillage. Each morning fearful that during the night something might have happened to it, he rode the miles across the desert to the highest of the sand hills, from which with eyes keen as an eagle’s, he looked, the while whetting his wolf-like appetite to feed upon it. In the city there was a boy his own age, the son of the king, and nearly as strong and brave as he, who day after day was drilled to take his father’s place; and who had dreams of empire more extensive than his father’s. When he was grown, he journeyed with a considerable retinue eastward into Persia, where he was to marry the daughter of a great prince. It was well his caravan guard was strong; because Chalginna, who had gathered about him near a hundred kindred spirits ruled by his fiercer spirit hovered upon its flanks, as a band of hungry wolves from the shelter of the thicket eye the lambs while the shepherd is about and lick their chops in anticipation of mutton at the first lapse of vigilance. The band reasoning that the wedding party, returning, would be richer by the princess and her dowry, deferred their attack; but reckoned not that part of that dowry would be a dozen elephants, the first brought into the valley of the Euphrates. In a seemingly boundless desert, where the hills of sand were shifted by the winds and famine and thirst held cheerless dominion, they charged the caravan; but their camels balked and ran away, never before having seen or scented such monsters. Two, crazed by the sight of the great beasts, lost their heads and charged alone, bearing their now unwilling riders who rolled off and sought to hide in the sand drifts. The prince and his mahout, on a young male elephant hunted them. The elephant threshed the camels into helpless cripples and the prince killed the two robbers with shafts from his cross-bow. This failure taught Chalginna a lesson. When the elephants were placed to pasture in the rich river plains; under cover of the night, he drove his war camels into their vicinity, until they knew the herd and the herd knew the camels. The boldest of his men provided themselves with short staffs, tipped with an iron point and hook, first walked among the elephants and then rode about upon their heads as did their mahouts. All the elephants grew to know and mind them, except Gisco, the young bull which the prince rode. He trumpeted wrathfully and beat about dangerously with his trunk whenever a Semite or camel approached him.