“The palace of King Erigalla. His subjects are the beggars and lepers of the city; they may render obeisance to their sovereign; but let no other person dare, or to speak with, save to revile him. He who disobeys shall be made a beggar and blind.” ———— Gisco, the day after the battle, lay where he had fallen. When night came on, driven by thirst to move despite the pain, slowly he rose on his great columnar legs and stumblingly dragged his ungainly body to the river where on the low bank he sank exhausted and filled himself with the tepid water. Screened by a dense growth of water palm and creepers, he lay there for several days; then having recovered sufficiently to move about a bit, fed upon the tender rushes of the marsh. After many days his strength returned. Going forth to feed in the pastures he found another bull had usurped his place as leader of the herd. After a battle lasting for hours he regained his supremacy. Chalginna’s mahouts, wishing to use the elephants to move some great stones to strengthen the wall came down to drive the herd to the city. Gisco would not let one of them approach him, but followed after the submissive herd, trumpeting his resentment. Instinctively he shunned the prison of Erigalla until he sensed his master was within, then pressing his head against the great front stone, backed by his seven tons of bulk he shoved upon it but could not shake or budge it as the stones were set in cement mortar and riveted with bars of iron. Then he passed his trunk into one of the apertures; and the captive reached out his arm and stroked the end of it with his hand. A trooper passing on a camel jabbed the elephant in the flank with the point of his spear. He turned more quickly than seemed possible and killed both trooper and camel; then driven to madness by the scent of the nomad horde in possession of the city, or possibly to revenge his master, he charged through the gate, killing and destroying as he went, and for an hour was master of the city. They set out poisoned fruit to tempt him but he would not eat. They sought to blind him with darts, but his small eyes were uninjured, though his head and great sides bristled with arrows. At the order of Chalginna, a gang of workmen set a great stake deep in the earth, without the wall beside the road near the great gate and not more than fifty yards from King Erigalla’s prison; to this they fixed a few links of heavy chain. The mahout who had driven him before the city had been sacked was forced by threats of death to bring him to the stake and fasten the chain upon his leg, a few inches above his five great toes; and Gisco too was a prisoner, and so near that when the king spoke his name he heard and answered.