down a steep bank--in one rush. The huge limbs moved as steadily as
pistons, eight feet to each stride, and the wrinkled skin of the elbow
points rustled. The undergrowth on either side of him ripped with a
noise like torn canvas, and the saplings that he heaved away right and
left with his shoulders sprang back again and banged him on the flank,
and great trails of creepers, all matted together, hung from his tusks
as he threw his head from side to side and plowed out his pathway. Then
Little Toomai laid himself down close to the great neck lest a swinging
bough should sweep him to the ground, and he wished that he were back in
the lines again.
The grass began to get squashy, and Kala Nag s feet sucked and squelched
as he put them down, and the night mist at the bottom of the valley
chilled Little Toomai. There was a splash and a trample, and the rush of
running water, and Kala Nag strode through the bed of a river, feeling
his way at each step. Above the noise of the water, as it swirled round
the elephant s legs, Little Toomai could hear more splashing and some
trumpeting both upstream and down--great grunts and angry snortings, and
all the mist about him seemed to be full of rolling, wavy shadows.
Ai! he said, half aloud, his teeth chattering. The elephant-folk are
out tonight. It is the dance, then!
Kala Nag swashed out of the water, blew his trunk clear, and began
another climb. But this time he was not alone, and he had not to make
his path. That was made already, six feet wide, in front of him, where
the bent jungle-grass was trying to recover itself and stand up. Many
elephants must have gone that way only a few minutes before. Little
Toomai looked back, and behind him a great wild tusker with his little
pig s eyes glowing like hot coals was just lifting himself out of the
misty river. Then the trees closed up again, and they went on and up,
with trumpetings and crashings, and the sound of breaking branches on
every side of them.
At last Kala Nag stood still between two tree-trunks at the very top
of the hill. They were part of a circle of trees that grew round an
irregular space of some three or four acres, and in all that space, as
Little Toomai could see, the ground had been trampled down as hard as
a brick floor. Some trees grew in the center of the clearing, but their
bark was rubbed away, and the white wood beneath showed all shiny and
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