He himself had grown afraid; for the fear of a crowd is contagious, and spreads nearly as readily from black to white as from white to black.

He broke open a chop-box and consoled himself with whisky.
Forcing our way through vegetation that crowded around a spur of volcanic rock, it soon became evident that the whole of the huge herd was breakfasting not far in front of us, tearing off limbs of trees, and crashing about as if noise were the only object.

We climbed and attempted to look down on them, only to discover that the part of the forest where we were consisted of a narrow belt, with a mile-wide open space beyond it between us and the elephants.

The wind was from them toward us, but that did not wholly account for the amount of noise that reached us.

It was the fact that the herd was twice as big as we imagined.