I looked to the right.

The ground was strewn with boulders, among which grew thorns and rank grass, impracticable for men on foot at night.

I looked behind me, meditating retreat, and there, some hundreds of yards away behind low, scrubby mimosas mixed with aloe-like plants, I saw something brown toss up and disappear again that might very well have been the trunk of an elephant.

Then, animated by the courage of despair and a desire to know the worst, I began to descend the elephant track towards the lake almost at a run.
Ten minutes or so more brought us to the eastern head of the lake, where the reeds whispered in the breath of the night wind like things alive.
As I expected, it proved to be a bare, open space where nothing seemed to grow.

Yes, and all about me were the decaying remains of elephants, hundreds of them, some with their bones covered in moss, that may have lain here for generations, and others more newly dead.