somewhere near him. He put out his arm and felt the bark, but Kala Nag
moved forward, still tramping, and he could not tell where he was in the
clearing. There was no sound from the elephants, except once, when two
or three little calves squeaked together. Then he heard a thump and a
shuffle, and the booming went on. It must have lasted fully two hours,
and Little Toomai ached in every nerve, but he knew by the smell of the
night air that the dawn was coming.
The morning broke in one sheet of pale yellow behind the green hills,
and the booming stopped with the first ray, as though the light had
been an order. Before Little Toomai had got the ringing out of his head,
before even he had shifted his position, there was not an elephant in
sight except Kala Nag, Pudmini, and the elephant with the rope-galls,
and there was neither sign nor rustle nor whisper down the hillsides to
show where the others had gone.
Little Toomai stared again and again. The clearing, as he remembered it,
had grown in the night. More trees stood in the middle of it, but the
undergrowth and the jungle grass at the sides had been rolled back.
Little Toomai stared once more. Now he understood the trampling. The
elephants had stamped out more room--had stamped the thick grass and
juicy cane to trash, the trash into slivers, the slivers into tiny
fibers, and the fibers into hard earth.
Wah! said Little Toomai, and his eyes were very heavy. Kala Nag, my
lord, let us keep by Pudmini and go to Petersen Sahib s camp, or I shall
drop from thy neck.
The third elephant watched the two go away, snorted, wheeled round, and
took his own path. He may have belonged to some little native king s
establishment, fifty or sixty or a hundred miles away.
Two hours later, as Petersen Sahib was eating early breakfast, his
elephants, who had been double chained that night, began to trumpet, and
Pudmini, mired to the shoulders, with Kala Nag, very footsore, shambled
into the camp. Little Toomai s face was gray and pinched, and his
hair was full of leaves and drenched with dew, but he tried to salute
Petersen Sahib, and cried faintly: The dance--the elephant dance! I
have seen it, and--I die! As Kala Nag sat down, he slid off his neck in
a dead faint.
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