But, since native children have no nerves worth speaking of, in two
hours he was lying very contentedly in Petersen Sahib s hammock with
Petersen Sahib s shooting-coat under his head, and a glass of warm milk,
a little brandy, with a dash of quinine, inside of him, and while the
old hairy, scarred hunters of the jungles sat three deep before him,
looking at him as though he were a spirit, he told his tale in short
words, as a child will, and wound up with:
Now, if I lie in one word, send men to see, and they will find that the
elephant folk have trampled down more room in their dance-room, and
they will find ten and ten, and many times ten, tracks leading to that
dance-room. They made more room with their feet. I have seen it. Kala
Nag took me, and I saw. Also Kala Nag is very leg-weary!
Little Toomai lay back and slept all through the long afternoon and into
the twilight, and while he slept Petersen Sahib and Machua Appa followed
the track of the two elephants for fifteen miles across the hills.
Petersen Sahib had spent eighteen years in catching elephants, and he
had only once before found such a dance-place. Machua Appa had no need
to look twice at the clearing to see what had been done there, or to
scratch with his toe in the packed, rammed earth.
The child speaks truth, said he. All this was done last night, and
I have counted seventy tracks crossing the river. See, Sahib, where
Pudmini s leg-iron cut the bark of that tree! Yes; she was there too.
They looked at one another and up and down, and they wondered. For the
ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to
fathom.
Forty years and five, said Machua Appa, have I followed my lord, the
elephant, but never have I heard that any child of man had seen what
this child has seen. By all the Gods of the Hills, it is--what can we
say? and he shook his head.
When they got back to camp it was time for the evening meal. Petersen
Sahib ate alone in his tent, but he gave orders that the camp should
have two sheep and some fowls, as well as a double ration of flour and
rice and salt, for he knew that there would be a feast.
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